Ways to deal with test anxiety
Before the test, when candidates realize that the test has some potential threat to themselves, they will have a psychological experience of anxiety. This is when facing the college entrance examination or A common and prominent phenomenon among students taking the high school entrance examination. Here are the methods I bring to you to deal with test anxiety.
Growth rules
1. Moderate test anxiety is conducive to children’s performance in exams
Many middle school students have it before the exam. A certain degree of nervousness or anxiety is normal. Moderate tension can maintain the excitement of candidates, enhance their enthusiasm and consciousness for learning, and improve their attention and reaction speed. It is necessary to maintain a certain level of tension during the exam and its preparation. If a child is always careless and does not take study and exams seriously, it will be detrimental to his performance in the exam room.
2. Anxiety levels that are too high or too low are not conducive to test performance
It does not mean that the higher the level of test anxiety, the higher the learning efficiency and the better the academic performance. Anxiety and academic performance show an inverted U-shaped curve. Test anxiety has an optimal value. When it is at this value, the test effect is best. If it is too low or too high, learning will be restricted. This law is called? Yerkes Dodson's Law?.
In the figure below, the a curve refers to the role of different levels of anxiety in completing difficult, moderate and moderate tasks. It is obvious that only moderate anxiety produces higher efficiency; while the b curve refers to difficult and complex tasks. In general, it can be seen that low anxiety has the best effect.
That is to say: for exams that are not very difficult, maintaining a moderate level of anxiety is conducive to test performance; while for exams that are more difficult and demanding, such as the high school entrance examination and college entrance examination, maintaining a low level of anxiety Anxiety contributes to good grades.
3. Parents’ high expectations aggravate their children’s exam performance.
Parents place too high expectations on their children, which may lead to high levels of test anxiety in their children.
For example: Although some children work hard, their grades are still at a middle level. Parents ignore this actual situation and set a goal for their children to be among the top five in the class. Such high expectations put excessive psychological pressure on children, who are afraid that if they fail in the exam, they will be unable to explain to their parents and live up to their parents' hard work. This will lead to children's aversion to learning and exams, and aggravate exam anxiety.
4. Parents’ attitude toward their children after taking exams affects their children’s test anxiety level
If parents adopt overly interfering, overprotective, and severe punishment parenting styles, their children’s test anxiety level will decrease. will be high.
For example: Some parents use sticks or criticism to children whose test scores are not satisfactory, which may increase the child's test anxiety level.
If parents adopt a warm, understanding, and democratic parenting style, it will help alleviate their children's test anxiety levels. In other words, if parents can accept children with unsatisfactory grades, encourage and support them, and work with them to analyze the causes of their mistakes and find solutions together, the children will feel that their parents are with them. Yes, he's not alone, which helps ease your child's anxiety levels.
Tips
Some children are afraid of being criticized by their parents, teachers, and ridiculed by their classmates if they do not do well in exams. This is a fear of negative evaluation. Fear of negative evaluation refers to the fear of negative evaluation by others, the distress of negative evaluation, and the expectation that others may evaluate oneself. The fear of negative evaluation will aggravate the child's test anxiety level, showing anxiety reactions such as insomnia before the test and a blank brain during the test.
5. A child’s perception of exams affects his or her test anxiety level
If children regard exams as a good opportunity to prove their abilities, it will stimulate some of their Behavioral means to face the exam positively and perform at the expected or even extraordinary level.
If children regard exams as something that will have a negative impact on themselves, it will cause negative emotions such as anxiety and helplessness, causing the children to be unable to perform to their normal level when facing exams.
6. A child’s past exam experience affects his or her test anxiety level.
Previous exam experience affects a child’s evaluation of his or her ability to cope with exams. If a child has accumulated a fear of failure and a negative attitude toward exams in past exams, he or she will have a sense of incompetence and inferiority in subsequent exams, and experience negative emotions such as unpleasantness, anxiety, and nervousness, which may lead to He cannot concentrate in the exam room, is not confident in himself, is nervous and anxious about exams, etc. These may lead to failure of the exam, thus creating a vicious cycle.
Parenting strategies
1. Parents should establish a correct attitude towards their children’s test scores and avoid negative evaluation of their children
Parents should have a good attitude towards their children’s performance mentality, treat it rationally, and grasp the degree. Parents should be aware that grades are a judgment that reflects a child's mastery of the knowledge they have learned at a certain stage or their ability to apply this knowledge. It is affected by many subjective and objective factors and is a relative concept.
Children in adolescence have an enhanced sense of autonomy and strong self-esteem. They want to be respected, understood, recognized, and affirmed. They need psychological support and emotional comfort.
For example: When facing a child who has just returned home from the examination room, parents should not cross-examine the child again and again like an interrogation. Sometimes parents' excessive questioning will increase the child's test anxiety. When faced with children who fail in exams, parents should abandon the methods of beating, scolding, getting angry, and criticizing, patiently analyze the reasons for failure with their children, find solutions to the problems, and encourage their children to do well in the next exam.
2. Help children establish a positive cognitive schema
Schema is our habitual way of looking at problems. It is composed of past accumulated experience and organized knowledge. of.
For example: before the exam, parents can educate their children like this: The exam can test the learning situation during this period, but it cannot fully reflect everyone’s ability. If your results are not satisfactory this time, it means that you are in a certain situation. There are still loopholes in one or some knowledge. If you can make up for it in time, you can improve yourself next time and get good results in the exam. You can tell your children that just because they didn’t do well in the exam last time does not mean they will not do well this time. Don’t be affected by previous exams, don’t deny yourself, prepare carefully, and you will make progress.
After failing in the exam, do not blame your child too much. You can help your child analyze the reasons for the exam failure and find solutions to the problem.
3. Parents should not give their children too high expectations and set appropriate goals for their children.
Some parents have too high and strict requirements for their children and require their children to achieve everything at all times. Best, this makes children form self-requirements that they must be the best in everything, which brings a lot of psychological pressure. Once the child fails to do well in the exam, he will not be able to accept it. If the gap between the goal and the goal is large, the child will feel discouraged, nervous and anxious, which is not conducive to his performance in the exam.
Parents should discuss with their children when setting goals for their children, and set goals for their children step by step based on their actual abilities.
4. Relieve test anxiety through exercise, body relaxation and other methods.
Exercise to eliminate anxiety. Students mainly focus on mental activities. Appropriate exercise is an effective way to eliminate brain fatigue. Parents can suggest that their children take a walk, play ball, or do gymnastics based on their actual situation. Because exercise can eliminate some nervous chemicals and relax your nerves.
Interest Anxiety Elimination Method: When people are doing things that interest them, their whole body and mind will be involved, and all worries and worries will be thrown out of the sky. Therefore, parents can suggest that their children do some interesting things after intense study, such as singing, reading, listening to music, etc., which can eliminate fatigue, resolve worries, and stay away from test anxiety.
Body relaxation method
Facial relaxation? A. Stare your eyes round, tense the eyes and orbital muscles, hold for 10 seconds, and then relax; B. Pull the corners of your mouth back as much as possible and keep 10 seconds, then relax; C. Clench your teeth, hold for 10 seconds, and then relax; D. Press your tongue against the roof of your mouth, tense the tongue, hold for 10 seconds, and then relax.
E. After practicing each part separately, you can relax the face as a whole: pull up the brows, open the eyes as wide as possible, pull the corners of the mouth back as much as possible, clench the teeth as much as possible, hold for 10 seconds, and then relax.
Neck muscle relaxation? Tighten the neck muscles from the front, back, left, and right directions, hold for 10 seconds, and then relax.
Relax your back muscles? Pull your shoulders forward, feel the tension in your back muscles, hold for 10 seconds, and then relax.
Relax your abdominal muscles? Try to draw your abdomen in as if you are trying to escape someone else's punch. Hold it for 10 seconds, and then relax.
Relax your leg muscles? A. Tighten your legs and lift them upwards, as if there is a coin between your knees. Hold for 10 seconds, and then relax; B. Tighten your feet forward. Tighten, feel the tension in your calves, hold for 10 seconds, and then relax; C. Bend your feet hard toward the knees, hold for 10 seconds, and then relax.
5. Cope with test anxiety through some psychological adjustment methods
During the test, some children will have stage fright reactions due to test anxiety, such as flushed face, shortness of breath, cold hands and feet, etc. Severe cases such as nausea and shock may occur. Parents can teach their children some psychological adjustment methods to help them cope with this situation. In this way, even if the child loses a little time, he can adjust his mentality, slowly relax his mood, soothe his nervousness, and complete the exam calmly and smoothly.
Deep self-relaxation? Do this exercise before the exam: While your whole body is deeply relaxed, imagine the tense situation in the exam room. Start with the weakest situation, then imagine the most severe situation, repeat, and slowly you will no longer feel anxious in any stressful situation you imagine.
Press your temples, close your eyes and concentrate? Before the exam begins, sit upright with your eyes closed to calm yourself, take deep breaths for more than ten times, then press your temples with your thumbs, repeat several times. You can also think about your favorite people and pleasant things, or silently recite some encouraging quotes.
Positive self-suggestion? Self-suggestion means that you suggest a certain concept to yourself. Hint is a strong psychological set that guides potential motivations. Through self-suggestion, you can adjust your mood and emotions and relieve test anxiety.
Before the exam, children can be asked to say to themselves after getting up in the morning and before going to bed at night: My review status is getting better and better, and I will definitely make progress this time.
When facing a tense examination room before the exam, you can repeatedly tell yourself "relax, relax, relax" in your mind. Under the influence of this self-suggestion, the distracting thoughts in your mind will automatically disappear, thereby eliminating anxiety and relaxing your body and mind.
When encountering a question that they don’t know, you can let your children think like this: If I can’t do it, others can’t do it; if others can do it, I can do it; but I can do it. , others may not be able to do it.
Tips: An important aspect to avoid test anxiety is not to always look at the clock, nor to specify how long it will take to complete which questions, but to grasp the general rhythm of the test.
6. During the review period, let the children work and rest scientifically and eat healthily.
Some children will break their usual work and rest habits due to review, go to bed late and get up early, and stay up late to review. This can easily lead to lack of sleep and even biological clock disorders, which can affect learning efficiency during the day. It can also easily cause stress and anxiety due to lack of sleep, affecting mood and mental health.
Therefore, during the review period before the exam, you must pay attention to scientific work and rest, and balance work and rest. It is best to work out a scientific work and rest system with your children so that they can work hard to go to bed early and get up early, without burning the midnight oil or fighting fatigue. This will ensure you are energetic and clear-headed during the exam.
In addition, diet during review is also very important. During the exam preparation period, the learning tasks are heavy and the brain is consumed a lot. Parents should pay attention to their children's dietary nutrition and eat more protein-rich eggs, beans, fish, and meat. They should also eat more foods such as apples, bananas, and grapes. , celery, spinach, radish and other brain-tonifying fruits and vegetables. ;