Test Anxiety

Picture sitting down to take a quiz or test…

Your palms start to sweat, your heart beats rapidly, you feel faint, and a feeling a dread grows.  Nervousness overtakes you and you just KNOW it’s hopeless. As you try to concentrate your thoughts might become jumbled and it’s as if all the studying you did, everything you learned – you just forget. 

This is test anxiety. And it occurs in a number of our school aged children with rates estimated between 10 to 41 percent. Test anxiety has a negative effect on test performance. The effects can be detrimental with findings that high test anxiety can lower grades at least a full letter grade. 

Here are some things that your student can do to combat test anxiety before the test and during the test.

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Before the test

• Start studying days in advance

  • Study using multiple modalities (e.g., use flash cards, read the text, make diagrams)

  • But above all, play to their strength whether it is learning visually or verbally

• Take practice tests if they are available

• Get a good night’s sleep

• Eat a good breakfast or lunch before the quiz or

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During the test

• Note thought distortions (e.g., “I’m terrible at ___”) and have a way to combat them (e.g., “No – I can do ___”). Use positive self-talk (e.g., “the last quiz I did well”).

  • It’s important to practice this before the test when feeling calm so that your student can recognize the thought distortions and easily combat them. 

  • It will be much harder to do this when they are stressed and anxious and so the practice will help it to become second nature.

• Use deep breathing when they start to become stressed.

• Slowly and consciously relax their muscles one at a time.

• When starting the test, look for a few items they know immediately and answer these first so they can feel success.  This will help build their confidence.

• Focus on only one question at a time. 

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