We reasoned that, if worries lead to poor test performance and writing helps regulate these worries, then giving students the opportunity to express their thoughts and feelings about an impending examination would enhance test performance.

–  Writing about Testing Worries Boosts Exam Performance

I try to finish up fast.

–  Measuring Test Anxiety in Children: Scale Development and Internal Construct Validation

 

Two researchers tested a method which promises to eliminate test anxiety. Test anxiety in essence is feeling anxious about, before and during tests. Though it manifests in different ways in different students, the outcome is invariably a score which is not reflective of true potential. What they recommend is simple but powerful. Their method is worth trying.

There have been different measures of test anxiety designed over the years. Typically, students will have to read a series of statements and assign a score on a scale, reflecting how much a statement applies to them. This type of questionnaire is known as a self-reported measure, where “respondents are asked to report directly on their own behaviours, beliefs, attitudes, or intentions” (Lavrakas, 2008).

One example of a test anxiety measure, designed for children is the Children’s Test Anxiety Scale (CTAS) developed by Wren and Benson in 2004. This scale was the result of refinements made on the widely used Test Anxiety Scale for Children (TASC), developed by Dr. Seymour Sarason and his colleagues. Seymour Sarason was a renowned psychologist and an expert on alleviating anxiety, among other things. The CTAS was confirmed to be a valid measure of test anxiety as recently as 2018, according to the authors of The Test Anxiety Questionnaire for Children.

Attempting a test anxiety questionnaire might reveal insights about a student. Statements in such questionnaires are designed based on researchers’ understanding of how test anxiety manifests. For example, the CTAS is premised on the understanding (scientific) that test anxiety relates to thoughts, bodily reactions and behaviours which demonstrate that a student is not focused on the task at hand (Wren & Benson, 2004).

Someone with test anxiety may experience “intrusive self-denigrating thoughts” (Encyclopedia of Psychological Assessment: Test Anxiety, Zeidner & Matthews, 2008). Students with strong academic self-concept are less likely to experience such thoughts (The Test Anxiety Questionnaire for Children). Examples of self-denigrating thoughts which would distract a student during a test are, I am doing very poorly and It is hard for me to remember the answers (Wren & Benson, 2004). Such thoughts are less likely to appear in the minds of students who believe that they are well able to rise to an academic challenge.

Test anxiety can also manifest in the form of physical reactions. Such reactions include, the heart beating fast, finding it hard to sit still during an exam, hand shaking and experiencing unease in the “belly” (Wren & Benson, 2004).

The last component of test anxiety, the way Wren and Benson (2004) view it, has to do with what they term as “off-task behaviours”. Such behaviours according to them, include, looking around the room, checking the time (more often than necessary) and looking at other students.

Thoughts, bodily sensations and distracted behaviour may be hard to will away, especially for younger students. Students who have previously experienced distractions in one or more of these broad categories during tests might anticipate the same experience prior to tests.

There are a number of ways to pre-empt a bad experience or to ensure a more positive experience.

Researchers Ramirez and Beilock tested one such way by conducting 4 studies. They wanted to know if expressive writing just before an exam would reduce test anxiety to a level which allows for optimal performance. Expressive writing here, refers specifically to writing explicitly about exactly what the student is worried about in connection with an impending exam.

They were initially worried that the idea seemed counter-productive. Focusing on fears before an exam could make students experience fear more intensely. However, they referred to previous studies which confirmed how expressive writing could reduce overthinking in an unproductive way or self-defeating thoughts and wondered if expelling fears onto paper or a screen for that matter, would not also clear out the mind for optimal exam performance.

According to them, writing therapy (as a solution to working through complex psychological knots) works only over a long period of time and requires a lot of reflection. Here, they were testing if just writing something brief once and just before an exam would have a performance boosting effect.

In their first study, participants were given a pre-test (before the expressive writing intervention), told to do their best and nothing else. This pre-test consisted of Math questions. After the pre-test, they were told that they would be sitting for another Math test (post-test). This time though, they were paired with someone else. If both did well, they would get a monetary award. They were also told that they would be videotaped while doing the test. Before the post-test, they were also told, that the other student had finished and done well too. It was all up to them now. Having ensured the students were sufficiently stressed, they split them into two groups.

Both groups were given ten minutes. One was told to sit quietly. The other was asked to, “write as openly as possible about their thoughts and feelings regarding the math problems they were about to perform.” The group which wrote about worries did significantly better, compared with the pre-test, during the post-test.

To confirm it was writing explicitly about worries and not just writing in general which led to the performance gains, in study 2, they repeated study 1 but with 3 groups. One sat quietly, the other wrote about worries and the last wrote about an “unrelated, unemotional event”. The group which wrote about worries did better in the post-test and the performance of the other two groups went down.

They then wanted to know if this method worked well for everyone or only for students with high test anxiety. They conducted a test to find out, on two successive batches of students (one year apart) who were sitting for their final-year exam. Students were asked to fill up an anxiety questionnaire to measure their test anxiety “6 weeks before the final exam” (Ramirez & Beilock, 2011). Just before the exam, some students were asked to write about their worries about the exam. Some others were asked to think about a topic which would not be tested – so that students would not worry about the exam.

Students who had high test anxiety (as reflected by the score on the questionnaire they had attempted some 6 weeks prior) and who expressed their worries in writing before the exam did better than those with high anxiety and did not write about their worries. Those who expressed their worries in writing did as well as low-anxiety students.

The scores of students who were not affected by test anxiety to begin with, did not seem to be affected by the writing intervention.

Face it or be fazed by it.

The Brain Dojo