Tests and Anxiety

As a tutor for middle and high school students, one of the biggest issues that I tend to deal with is overcoming test anxiety. I have been in the field for over a decade now, and I have noticed a disturbing trend. More and more it seems, students are afraid of tests. Testing anxiety has become almost an epidemic. Don't get me wrong for as long as I can remember people got nervous before the day of the big test. But I am not talking about nervousness, even the kind that makes you miss a few answers. I am talking about paralyzing anxiety panic attacks. Some people get test taking anxiety so bad that they completely fail on tests of a subject that they should know perfectly well. This can completely cripple their ability to succeed.

Unfortunately, there is no easy cure for test anxiety. In order to treat it, you have to completely tailor the program to the individual. One of my students, for example, has had math test anxiety for several years now. In her case, it has to do with the fact that when she was very little, she had a lot of trouble understanding math. Although now she is very good at it, that anxiety has never gone away. Her test anxiety relates to deep feelings of insecurity as opposed to an inability to do the math. Therefore, I help her get over it by actually simulating a math test in the tutoring session. Every week, she will take a little mini test based on whatever she is working on in class. Although it might sound silly, it has worked wonders. She hasn't gotten over her math test anxiety yet, but it has gotten to a manageable level.

Some of my other kids, however, have much different issues with coping with test anxiety. For one of my younger students, the problem is that he never studies until the last minute. He has terrible time management skills, and as a result he never feels prepared even if he basically knows the material. Rather than giving him tests in class, I tutor him in ways to prepare ahead of time and help him study. If he over-prepares rather than under-preparing, he does fine on the tests. The test anxiety only hits when he isn't sure if he has studied the material enough. Nowadays, he is getting good scores and is virtually anxiety free.

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