TEST ANXIETY
Addis Ababa University
Psychology (Psyc 1011)
ASSIGNMENT ONE
Test Anxiety
Author: Supervisor:
Kaleab Lemma Gebre Dr.
Section 6
ID: UGR/2941/16
January 22, 2024 G.C.
TEST ANXIETY
Introduction
With the advancement of the education through history, burdens that fall on the shoulders
of students also increased. When it comes to achieving good results, then more hard work and
strive in needed. Students under this pressure are more likely vulnerable to test anxiety.
“Estimates are that between 40 and 60% of students have significant test anxiety that interferes
with their performing up to their capability.” 1reported a study about test anxiety. This is an
alarming number of students at different levels with this problem. Excessive test anxiety has
been the most common psychological problem among the education sector. Many students from
the elementary to high level education even do not know they are victims of this problem.
A significant test anxiety has devastating effect on both the physical and mental well-
being of the student. However, it is not given the proper attention and is mostly taken as a normal
situation among most students. Test anxiety could be simply reduced if identified and treated
from its root. The very first step is understanding what is test anxiety and at what stage is it
harming. After understanding what test anxiety is, it is necessary to know the effects of test
anxiety on the behavioral, mental and physical well-being of the body and treat each part
individually in order to reduce test anxiety to its proper degree. Test anxiety is beneficial to some
extent, but need to be treated when becomes significantly influencing.
Test Anxiety
Understanding Test Anxiety?
Almost every student feels nervous when he/she faces an exam or a test. It is abnormal
for any student to not feel some anxiety while approaching a big test. “It is perfectly natural to
feel some anxiety when preparing for and taking a test.”2 An anxiety which is excessive is what
harms a student and what tackles him/her from achieving the fruits of his/her study. This
excessive anxiety is what referred to as Test anxiety. “Test anxiety is the fear of students about
negative results of the evaluative procedures.”3 It is caused by the excessive concern of the
student to the negative results that could possibly come out of the test or its results.
In order to understand what is test anxiety, we should then figure out what test anxiety is
not. There are many wide-spread myths about test anxiety. We should free ourselves from the
wrong understanding of this concept because without the correct understanding of the problem,
1
Hilary Phan. A Student’s Perspective on Test Anxiety. p1
2
Mark Gilbert and Karen Gilbert. Test Anxiety. www.highschoolblues.com
3
Shafiq ur Rehman, Erum Javed and Muhammad Abiodullah. Effects of Test Anxiety on Academic Achievement at
Secondary School Level in Lahore. Bulletin of Education and Research. 2021, Vol. 43, No.3.
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TEST ANXIETY
we could not come out with the proper solution. Thus, let us list some myths that are wide-spread
among the school society get rid of them from our understanding. Here are some:
i. Some students are born with test anxiety: Test Anxiety is a learned behavior. It is
acquired as a result of many mental and behavioral pressures that the student carried.
We will discuss the causes of test anxiety separately in its part, but we should know that
any student which have no burden of achieving good results in examination cannot be
victim of text anxiety.
ii. Test Anxiety is a mental illness: Test anxiety is not a mental illness. It originates from
a fear of the negative results of failing an examination. Thinking about the negative
results of failing or doing bad in a test is a good thing that reminds us to be ready for it.
iii. Any level of test anxiety is bad: As aforementioned, it is not normal for any student
approaching some examination to not fear at all. Fear, to some extent, is necessary to
alarm the student to be ready for some coming occasion. In the case of test anxiety, fear
is a perfectly natural thing, because it alarms the student to work hard for the
examination.
iv. Test Anxiety cannot be reduced: Test anxiety is developed by learning, because it is a
learned behavior and it can be reduced by learning. We will go through the techniques
used to reduce text anxiety in the coming topics.
v. All students who are not prepared have test anxiety; Students who are well
prepared and who are intelligent will not have test anxiety; Attending class and
doing my homework should reduce all my test anxiety: Test anxiety could be
reduced by being ready for the examination, but we can’t say that student who studied
hard will not have any test anxiety when facing an examination. Also, we cannot say
that a student which did not study hard for the examination will encounter test anxiety.
The degree of test anxiety depends on the psychological ability of the individual to
his/her self and be calm when facing the test.
vi. Doing nothing about test anxiety will make it go away: we could see clearly that that
is not the case when we look at the statistics of the students of this problem.
vii. Being told to relax during a test will make you relaxed: No one needs to have a test
anxiety. A student cannot control his/her emotions when having a test anxiety. Just
telling someone to relax will not help him/her because the anxiety was not under their
control on the first place. Rather, most students get more worried identifying that their
fear is known by their classmates because most of them do not want to be thought as
people who have a mental disorder or problem.4
4
Nolting Paul D. Ph.D., Math Study Skills Workbook, Your Guide to Reducing Test Anxiety and Improving Study
Strategies, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
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TEST ANXIETY
Causes of Test Anxiety
Test anxiety is an acquired behavior through learning. There are major factors that affect
the degree of the test anxiety. Students facing different examinations in different situations will
never have the same level of test anxiety. Here are some of the factors that affect the degree of
test anxiety that a student encounter:
I. The association of grades and personal worth: A student that approaches a national
or international examination will never have the same level of test anxiety with a
student which approaches a school examination. The student fears to fall worthy tests
because they think of the negative consequences if they fall.
II. The feeling of the student towards themselves: Students with low self-confidence
are likely to have test anxiety. Some students feel a lack of control of themselves
while taking exams. These students are more likely to have test anxiety.
III. Thinking the negative results of poor grade: Test anxiety develops from thinking
of the negative consequences if poor grade is achieved. Students fear from alienation
from parents, family and friends due to poor grades. They think intensively about
their parents being disappointed by their results and being joke of their friends.
IV. The school society: Test anxiety could be caused by the reaction of the education
society, especially teachers show to a student. Most students who were embarrassed
by their teacher are more likely to be affected by test anxiety.
V. Type of examination: Especially examinations which are timed are often a cause for
test anxiety for some students. Many students fear of not finishing the test, even if
they can do all the given questions and problems. And others do not check what they
have done from the fear of being the last to leave classroom.5
Effects of Test Anxiety
Test anxiety comes with a host of problems in different aspects of our body and mind.
“Test anxiety can cause a host of problems in students. Although each person will experience a
different collection of symptoms with differing degrees of intensity, the symptoms fall into a few
categories.
Physical - headaches, nausea or diarrhea, extreme body temperature changes, excessive
sweating, shortness or breath, light-headedness or fainting, rapid heart beat, and/or dry mouth.
Emotional - excessive feelings of fear, disappointment, anger, depression, uncontrollable
crying or laughing, feelings of helplessness
5Nolting Paul D. Ph.D., Math Study Skills Workbook, Your Guide to Reducing Test Anxiety and Improving Study
Strategies, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
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TEST ANXIETY
Behavioral - fidgeting, pacing, substance abuse, avoidance
Cognitive - racing thoughts, 'going blank', difficulty concentrating, negative self-talk,
feelings of dread, comparing yourself to others, difficulty organizing your thoughts.”6
The overlap of these problems on the individual will inhibit a student’s ability to recall
the information he/she studied for the examination. The anxiety causes many kinds of “noise”
and “tension” on the head of the student and block the ability to remember what he/she studied.
Reducing Test Anxiety
When reducing test anxiety, we should focus on the basic causes in order to get solution
to the problem of test anxiety. We can reduce test anxiety by focusing on the causes of the test
anxiety. As mentioned in the above parts, the causes of test anxiety are generally classified into
two. There are generally internal or external stimuli which trigger the stress or fear.
External Triggers
External Triggers are mostly outside stimuli that affect the degree of anxiety we
encounter. Our body gives response to the outside environment through the stimuli and action
process. The body receives stimuli from the environment and it gives the proper response to the
stimuli based on what we inherited or learned. In the case, where we are in an exam hall, the
external stimuli could be what we see (visual) or what we hear (auditory) and we give response
to these stimuli based what we know (learned) before. With this response comes test anxiety,
thus to reduce the test anxiety, we should reduce our contact with these external responses.
Internal Triggers
Internal Trigger is the stimuli that arouses from our mind or physical body, which our
body gives response to. Internal triggers could arouse from our memory (past event), mind
(future interpretation), physical body (pain in some part of the body), etc… We interpret these
stimuli based on what we learned before and come to the conclusion, “I will fail in this
examination.” Or “What if I failed in this exam?”. And we begin to think about the negative
effects and become stresses. Thus in order to reduce this stress, we should rationally give
answers to the questions that are raised by our mind as result of these internal triggers.
Applications of Reducing Test Anxiety and its Benefits
We will see some real-life applications to practice reducing test anxiety. Let us see some
external or internal triggers and their possible solutions:
6 Mark Gilbert and Karen Gilbert. Test Anxiety. www.highschoolblues.com
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TEST ANXIETY
A. External Triggers
Some visual triggers could be the sight of students getting up and leaving the
classroom, the room becoming more and more empty, the clock ticking away, etc.. and some of
the possible solutions for these triggers are sitting right up front to be prevented from scanning
the room, avoid temptation to look up often, staying focused on the exam, etc…
Some auditory triggers could be the sound of backpacks being zipped up, sound of
clocks ticking, door opening and closing as people leave, sound of people outside of the
classroom, etc… and some of the possible solutions are using ear drown out sound by sitting
near noisy fan or vent, use ear plugs, ask the instructor if you can listen to music while taking
your exam, etc…
B. Internal Triggers
The internal triggers that are the effect of test anxiety are mostly found within the
mind of the student. The student could think about the negative outcomes of the examination.
This is mostly the cognitive effect of test anxiety. You can resolve this cognitive problem by
cognitive resolution. Examine your fear rationally, for example, say “Could really an exam affect
my life?”, “I passed the exams before, why could I fail now?”, etc…
“Strategies for ending negative thoughts:
Is your thought a true statement? If not, remind yourself of your positive work you’ve
done to prepare for the exam and the work you’re putting into combating your anxiety. Repeat
some normalizing statements to yourself: I’m prepared for this; I can handle the situation; This
feeling is normal and can be overcome; I’m in control; I’m going to focus on my strengths.
Focus on things you’ve done to prepare and the body of knowledge you’ve
developed.”7
These rational questions help the student to overcome the cognitive effects of the test
anxiety. He / She could also study before the test in order to overcome the cognitive effects of
the test anxiety.
In order to control our emotions and take over the “noise” that disturbs our minds, we
could use visualization techniques. For example, an article says that, “Visualization means that
you create a place in your mind that is free from stress. Many visualization techniques begin by
envisioning a staircase and once you reach the top of the staircase you are transported to your
“Go To” place. Try to use all of your senses to aid you in bringing this scene to life. What do you
see, hear, smell, taste, feel? The more details, the more real your “Go To” place is, and the more
you can move away from the anxiety.”8 You could reduce the physical effect through
progressive relaxation, by relaxing your hand and legs.
7
Understanding Test Anxiety & Anxiety Reduction Strategies. UNC Counseling Center. www.unco.edu/counseling
8 Understanding Test Anxiety & Anxiety Reduction Strategies. UNC Counseling Center. www.unco.edu/counseling
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TEST ANXIETY
Reference Books
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Davis, Martha, Ph.D., Robbins Eshelman, Elisabeth, MSW and McKay, Matthew, Ph.D. The
Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook. Oakland: New Harbinger Publications, Inc. 2019.
Gray, Peter. Psychology. New York: Catherine Woods, Worth Publishers, 2007.
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Nugent, Patricia M. and Vitale, Barbara A. Test Success: Test-Taking Techniques for Beginning
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Paul D. Nolting, Ph.D., Math Study Skills Workbook, Your Guide to Reducing Test Anxiety and
Improving Study Strategies, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Rehman, Shafiq ur, Javed, Erum and Abiodullah, Muhammad. Effects of Test Anxiety on Academic
Achievement at Secondary School Level in Lahore. Bulletin of Education and Research.
2021, Vol. 43, No.3.
Ross, David B. Group reduction of Test Anxiety: Does It Really Work?. Washington St: The College
of Lake County. 1994.
Soares, David. Examination anxiety: A review of interventions and report of a school-based, group
intervention by an educational psychology service (EPS). School of Environment, Education
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Understanding Test Anxiety & Anxiety Reduction Strategies. UNC Counseling Center.
www.unco.edu/counseling
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