Thesis Statement For Test Anxiety

Test anxiety is a real and measureable problem student’s face regardless of their grade or level of academic achievement. Test anxiety can also adversely affect how students participate in and view the learning process long term. This study was designed to examine the effects of test anxiety on high school students specifically, and how the stress associated with the processes or outcomes of standardized testing can negatively impact their performance. There is also a theory that contributing factors of test anxiety can also impact social anxiety. The purpose of this study is to determine if students with determined higher levels of test anxiety perform lower overall on standardized

The first psychology class that I enrolled in was an elective. After taking the class, I realized that psychology is relevant to every individual’s life and during my course of study, test anxiety and effects of divorce in adolescence caught my interest. Test anxiety has interested me since I took the SAT in high school. I had excellent grades in school, but I was concerned about my chances of getting into the college of my choice due to my low SAT score. I would like to work with students to find ways to relieve this anxiety and offset low-test scores. I first became interested in the effects of divorce after my parents separated during my freshman year of college and I observed my siblings and my different reactions to the event. After watching my brother shut down because of the divorce, I realized that many people react to stressful events differently and I want to work with students to cope with such situations in a positive fashion.

Test anxiety is a fairly common phenomenon in educational culture today. Research has been completed on different facets of anxiety from developing learned behavior through primary education structure to an increase in somaticized symptoms in the college setting. Many research articles discussed quantitative results and few I found truly focused on the qualitative thoughts and emotions of the students effected the most. My proposal aims to investigate the thoughts, emotions, and future behaviors of those suffering from the anxiety that plagues college students daily, especially during finals and other high-stakes testing.

We need to make this problem known around the world so that people in need can get professional help. We feel that anybody with test anxiety can be “cured” from the fact. We just need to convince people how big of a problem this really is.

Participants underwent a screening process to ensure eligibility and were then randomly assigned to a treatment, or a control group. Those in the worry exposure group were trained to listen to one worry image at a time for 20-30 minutes and use a 0-100 SUDS scale to measure anxiety. Students placed in the expressive writing group were told to write about their academic worry in detail for 20 minutes per session. Audio-photic stimulation was administered through headphones for 35 minutes at a time, and programmed for worry reduction. The participants continued this for one month before being evaluated again for pathological academic stress.

Pressure to succeed at these tests creates feelings of anxiousness and stress in students that can cause students to dread coming to school at all. Students should be able to enjoy coming to school and learning. Pressure from standardized tests does not allow students to further their education in a stress-free environment. This can be detrimental to the quality of education. Dawn Laborde is a mother of three school-aged children from Florida. She said, “My third grader loves school, but I can’t get her out of the car this year.” (“States Listen as Parents Give Rampant Testing an F”) This demonstrates how even children as young as eight or nine years old can feel the pressures given by standardized testing. It is worrying that young children and teenagers are spending so much of their time in school agonizing over standardized tests and other concerns that accompany them. The pressure to succeed at these tests can also cause students to feel physically ill. Education researcher Gregory J. Cizek states, “...illustrating how testing...produces crippling anxiety in even the brightest students and makes young children vomit, or cry, or both.” (“Is The Use of Standardized Tests Improving Education in America?”) The fact that students are brought to tears or made physically sick due to stress from testing is very disturbing. Schools should be relaxed environments where students can freely learn and grow

Anxiety is a very common disorder when it comes to students in school. There are various types of anxiety, one common example is test taking anxiety. Test taking anxiety is a nervous feeling that students have while taking a test, and sometimes before or after taking the exam. This makes it impossible for students to do their best and to show their knowledge. When students are under stress it causes them to have physical symptoms, such as sweating or rapid breathing. Students who aren't prepared for tests, but care about doing well are also likely to have test anxiety before taking any type of test. Supporters argue standardized tests effectively measure student achievement, and opponents argue that tests are good for measuring students’ performances.

My test anxiety is strong. In certain situations, I feel like I cannot think, like my mind goes blank. The concept of taking a test is more challenging than actually taking the test. My test anxiety causes me to feel like I'm going to fail and that there is no chance that I will get a good grade no matter how hard I try. I tend to feel it the most when I meet big tests such as the SAT and AP exams. At times, some of the material that I’ve learned sticks and I could focus on that, however, most of time I forget what I learned and studied and it all goes blank. I also feel the butterflies in my stomach, my body beginning to shake, and worst of all, I feel like throwing up. Test anxiety caused me to doubt myself in general. To make matters worse, my school at times categorize tests as a big part of your grade and sometimes with that, my grades tend to drop. This has affected me as a student since it causes me to always doubt myself and have poor thoughts to what will happen and I envision bad

Embse, Nathaniel von der, and Natasha Segool, and John Carlson, and Anisa Goforth, and Justin Barterian. Heightened test anxiety among young children: Elementary school students' anxious responses to high-stakes testing. Wiley Periodicals, Inc, 2013.ResearchGate. Jan. 1980 .

Studies have shown that normal kids today have higher stress levels when compared to child psychiatric patients in 1950’s. This is hypothesized to be caused by the increasing emphasis put on standardized tests and using them in school, but what is a standardized test? A standardized test is any form of test that requires all test takers to answer the same questions in the same way, and that is scored in a ‘standard’ or consistent manner. While standardized tests are the most reliable way to measure a student's progress, they are still fairly inaccurate and can be detrimental to the student’s education

Have you ever suffered from test anxiety? Once in my high school math class, I had a grumpy teacher that made me feel very anxious about my grade. When I had to take my final exam, I was so nervous that I fainted. The result was terrible. Test anxiety can be severe that students can fail not just a test, but the whole class. Maybe they have to retake a class and spend more time and money. Maybe they become discouraged and don’t want to continue. According to Sara Reardon in the article “Got Worries About a Test? Write them Off”, researchers have found that Writing about your feeling before a teat can significantly reduce test anxiety. This is a good thing it tries; however, everyone is different and there are several other strategies college students can use to reduce test anxiety.

Addressing the issue of test anxiety with school students is crucial. Test anxiety is defined as feelings of tension and anxiety that interfere with the ability to communicate what one knows in a test situation. It can lead to school failure, poor self-esteem, and stress related physical ailments. Although it is natural to experience some degree of distress while being evaluated, some students ' previous negative experiences greatly effect their reaction to a testing experience. With the increase of testing in our schools, school counselors need to recognize the role test anxiety plays in student performance and help to implement effective strategies to assist students. It seems possible to do this through cognitive and theory, which will be discussed later in this paper. There are many effective strategies that teachers can implement to assist test anxious students. Teachers can employ formative factors, habitual prudence, purposeful learning experiences, and test-wise guidelines. Ascertaining test anxiety involves becoming more aware of the types of students with test anxiety so that they can develop, modify, and implement new repertoires in their assessment procedures. Using more formative factors in their assessment procedures lessens anxiety levels and enhances the instructional process. Finally, when teachers provide purposeful learning experiences and test-wise guidelines students are able to obtain maximum performance. Relaxation techniques and systematic

This is an article that specifically looks at anxiety in the school setting for adolescents. This article starts off with a story of a girl named Samantha. Samantha is a fourteen year old student that has test taking anxiety. She feels sweaty and would see the nurse daily because of her anxiousness. The article talks about the case of Samantha being common with many students in school. The article then goes into the different characteristics such as worry. Anxiety can manifest in three different ways: behaviorally, physiologically, and cognitively. Many different behaviors that children exhibit because of anxiety are reflected their attempts to control their anxiety. When discussing anxiety, there are different causes of anxiety and

Croyle, Weimer and Eisenman (2011) conducted a study examining test anxiety in the contexts of trait and state test anxiety , which differ respectively between determining whether all or specific examinations are viewed as threatening. This study looked at test anxiety and its relationship with self-knowledge variables such as self-esteem and self-efficacy, affect, and test performance within a college student population. The researchers presented their participants with the Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI) used to measure both state and trait test anxiety . Afterwards students were measured in test performance using percentages from a heavily weighted exam. Other variables were measured with ten item scales from the General Self-Efficacy Scale, Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. The results showed there was a gender difference among the measures where women scored higher in test anxiety with lower scores of self-efficacy and positive affect or emotions than men. Negative correlations of trait anxiety were found between self-efficacy, self-esteem and the TAI scores but not test scores; however, in state anxiety, the test scores were the most significant variable.. The self-knowledge variables were more highly correlated with test anxiety(Croyle, et al., 2011).

Tet anxiety is a very common thing among American students, especially for those whore are in higher education. This type of anxiety causes psychological tension that students experience before taking test. In the moment of test anxiety students have a strong feelings of failure that is followed by panic and stress pressure. Apparently many studies have showed that test anxiety often causes students to perform worse on the exam. "Test anxiety: Why it is increasing and 3 ways to curb it" by Valerie Strauss and " Anxiety, Self-Efficacy, and College Exam Grades" by Jennifer Barrows, Samantha Dunn, Carrie A. Lloyd are popular and scholarly articles that discuss test anxiety in US higher education and how it disadvantages students.