Examination Anxiety

  • Involves feelings of tension or uneasiness that occur before, during, or after an examination.
  • Exam anxiety may be helpful in some ways as:
  1. it can be motivating
  2. creates the pressure that is needed to stay focused on one’s performance
  • Examination nerves, worry, or fear of failure are normal for even the most talented student.
  • However, stress of formal examination results in such high degrees of anxiety in some students that they are unable to perform at a level which matches the potential they have shown in less stressful classroom situations.
  • Examination stress is characterised as “evaluative apprehension” or “evaluative stress”
  • Produces debilitating behavioural, cognitive, and physiological effects no different from those produced by any other stressor.
  • High stress can interfere with the student’s preparation, concentration, and performance.
  • Persons who are high in test anxiety tend to perceive evaluative situations as personally threatening; in test situations, they are often tense, apprehensive, nervous, and emotionally aroused.
  • Moreover, the negative self-centred cognitions which they experience distract their attention and interfere with concentration during examinations.
  1. High test anxious students respond to examination stress with:
  2. intense emotional reactions
  3. negative thoughts about themselves
  4. feelings of inadequacy
  5. helplessness
  6. loss of status and esteem
  • Generally, the high test anxious person instead of plunging into a task plunges inward, that is, either neglects or misinterprets informational cues that may be readily available to her/him, or experiences attentional blocks.
  • While preparing for examinations, one must spend enough time for study, overview and weigh one’s strengths and weaknesses, discuss difficulties with teachers and classmates, plan a revision timetable, condense notes, space out revision periods, and most importantly on the examination day concentrate on staying calm.