Test Anxiety

Overcoming Test Anxiety - Some Tools and Tips

We all are familiar with some sort of nervousness or anxiety now and then in our day to day life. One needs not be a scientist to understand that this nervousness grows when the incident that is going to take place in near future or the accident that has just happened will directly or indirectly affect our life.

Most students do experience some sort of anxiety, an uneasiness or apprehension during test or examination due to their over-concern, worry or fear. It is found that test anxieties sometimes causes mental blocks and the students leave the answer script blank though they knew the correct answer.

Researchers say that, anxiety creates a kind of "noise" or "mental static" in our brain that eventually blocks the ability to retrieve and use the data stored in our memory and also affects our normal reasoning and comprehension skills.

But how can we overcome Test Anxiety!

The test preparation needs to be started very early and there is no last minute suggestion or easy way outs to overcome the situation.

If one is conscious of his Test Anxiety he must take special care about studying strategically. Mind mapping is a good way of dealing with this, where you create a diagram that reflects the summary and important points or facts like dates of the text. The widely used tool in this segment is the tree structure. The basic point is that it creates an image that can be remembered easily if you can just get hold of one thread.

While preparing for the examination, take a step by step procedure and sharpen your abilities by appearing for mock-tests. The mock tests can help you approach the real test with much confidence. Do not forget to take care of "time management" when you appear for mock test.

One should stay relaxed during examination and it can only be done if he or she is well prepared for it beforehand. Do not forget to have a sound sleep on the night before the examination and do not go to the hall in empty stomach.

Be positive throughout the time; you know better than any body that it is not so heard a nut that you cannot crack. There you are as better as much you think yourself to be.

If anything goes wrong, take a deep breath and start again or skip to the next question, if necessary, come back to it later.

At the end spend some time to review the answer script.

Some test anxiety overcome programs are available to assist students in reducing Test Anxiety and other types of learning and performance blocks like Test-Edge or Freeze-Framer. These tools help students to dramatically improve their mental and emotional balance and systems. The National Demonstration Study found that these programs were highly successful in reducing test anxiety and improving test scores for students.

We all wish you best of luck for your success in the next examination.

Roy Williams is a freelance investigative writer. For more information on overcoming test anxiety he recommends you to visit The Institute of HeartMath (http://www.heartmath.org/) a nonprofit 501(c) (3) organization.

Test Anxiety

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