Anxious Students Gain on Tests by Writing About Fears
19 January 2011
This is the VOA Special English Education Report.
Some students get so nervous before a test, they do poorly even if they know the material. Sian Beilock, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago in Illinois, has studied these highly anxious test-takers.
SIAN BEILOCK: "They start worrying about the consequences. They might even start worrying about whether this exam is going to prevent them from getting into the college they want. And when we worry, it actually uses up attention and memory resources. I talk about it as your cognitive horsepower that you could otherwise be using to focus on the exam."
Professor Beilock and another researcher, Gerardo Ramirez, have developed a possible solution. Just before an exam, highly anxious test-takers spend ten minutes writing about their worries about the test.
SIAN BEILOCK: "What we think happens is when students put it down on paper, they think about the worst that could happen and they reappraise the situation. They might realize it's not as bad as they might think it was before and, in essence, it prevents these thoughts from popping up -- from ruminating -- when they're actually taking a test."
The researchers tested the idea on a group of twenty anxious college students. They gave them two short math tests. After the first one, they asked the students to either sit quietly or write about their feelings about the upcoming second test.
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