Solutions for Pre-examination Stress
Many students experience pre-examination stress that interrupts the preparation process for a test. There are several ways to combat and overcome this anxiety. Knowing your deadlines, preparing in an individualized style, and refusing to panic are the three key elements that can offer solutions for pretest anxiety.
Anxiety is often caused by a feeling of having no control over a situation. With regard to academic testing, the student may feel that they have spent time studying the wrong material, have not focused on the instructor’s priorities, or that they have not made the best use of their time. Consider a student who is learning to play a musical piece on the piano. If they are practicing the piece with errors, they may be reinforcing patterns that later have to be unlearned in order to play the music correctly. Therefore, not just practice, but guided practice is important, so that students do not learn lessons in a wasteful manner. Having a guide or tutor to assist with test preparation can offer a shortcut in getting directly to the main points of the examination, and to avoid wasting resources on less important aspects of study. Moreover, if a student is starting out with incorrect assumptions on their subject material, a tutor can help brush up on basic skills that will set a foundation for effective studying.
A student’s individual style of learning can also be a factor in pretest anxiety. Tutoring programs are available to optimize the student’s primary learning style, whether it is auditory, tactile, visual or engineering-oriented. Parents can also assist their students by quizzing them aloud on the questions that may come up on the test, especially if the student is an auditory learner who may benefit from hearing the material read out loud. Conversely, tactile learners may benefit from manipulative learning devices, such as small blocks that help with multiplication tasks. Visual learners crave colors, charts and illustrations in order to absorb information most effectively. A customized pretest routine can be devised for your student by a tutor. Then the parent can repeat some of these exercises at home to help reinforce the most crucial lessons.
If you know that a major test is approaching in six weeks, a series of small goals can be set to master certain subject material in a step-by-step manner. This approach minimizes panic and anxiety, because the student sees a checklist of items to be covered, and can detect that they are making progress along this “to-do” list. A feeling of controlling and mastering the subject matter encourages confidence and greatly reduces anxiety. Tutoring programs are an excellent way to set up such a list and execute it with success.
A large project can be overwhelming, but a dozen small projects timed appropriately for the individual student can seem more approachable. In this way, major academic tasks can be broken into smaller objectives that do not spark a panicky feeling in the student. When the student can say firmly, “I know this material,” then there is no reason for pretesting anxiety. Parental help is useful in setting up a calendar of exam deadlines, and helping the student to manage their time as they count down towards the test. Also, when tutoring help is needed to prepare for these deadlines, please contact our office so that we may assist you in an individualized study course. Whether you have six days or six months to prepare for a test, we can help your family to optimize the available time with state-of-the-art strategies for studying. By learning certain test-taking strategies in a customized manner, your child should be coached to replace anxious behavior with confident behavior, a habit which will reap many benefits throughout their academic career.
