Exam anxiety

Lal Fonseka

General Certificate of Education (G.C.E) Ordinary Level (O/L) examination results of 2012 were released a few days ago. By now all of us know who has done excellently at the exam through newspapers, radio broadcasts or through listening to examination officials announcing examination results on TV. Generally, statistical information about such results are presented to indicate students who have excelled and those who have failed miserably. There is also information about the number of schools that have excelled and those which have underperformed or failed. After such information is announced, there follows the drama of praising and awarding students, schools and/or political districts or regions that have statistically excelled while blaming those who have failed or performed unsatisfactorily. This state of affair is a common practice at the end of each examination circle of the different school/college examination level.

Excellent rankers

This year too, like in the previous years, yet again another few names have appeared in the news reports soon after the G.C.E O/L examination 2012 results were released. Media has still been giving wide publicity to the first four students (Rankers) who excelled in the examination. Let us also join with others who congratulate these students for their excellent performances. Good work, please keep it up even in future endeavours.

Now I will turn on to my questions. Why only four students are congratulated? How this happened? Why cannot at least 100 students score the same mark as the number one student scored? Then, why only such an importance is given to only four students? These are the questions every time prop up in my mind when the results of any examination is released. My answers to the above questions without any doubt will lead to a lot of controversies. Hence while appreciating the excellent performances shown by these four students once again; we will focus our attention to the reasons as why other students failed to gain such recognition.

A highest record

On the basis of previous grade 5 scholarship examination, a girl who had excelled well had been enrolled to a very popular school in Colombo to a grade 6 class had performed very badly in the first term test held by the new school. Some other students who obtained eligibility on the minimum marks had scored excellently.

Last year 542,260 candidates sat for the G.C.E O/L examination which was the highest recorded so far. Obtaining 9 "A"s is quite a good achievement. Right now, I do not have figures of the students who achieved nine "A"s. Nevertheless, I am sure it will work out to a fair and notable percentage. However, nobody talks about it.

As per the views of lot of scholars on the subject, a student cannot be assessed merely on his ability to reproduce the taught lessons on the answer paper. This concept is flawed when viewed in connection with the aim of education.Academic life forms the foundation of one's future as well as career. Through education, a child is transformed into a useful individual. To succeed in life, a student must absorb, analyse and utilise the acquired knowledge in his or her day-to-day life. In the current style of exams, only the absorption aspect is checked, while the other two vital aspects are left out. We must develop an integral mode of examination to analyse the overall development of the student through his or her studies.

Without making any further attempts to analyse the present system of recognising of such students, the following quote is inserted for the benefit of our readers.

"A competency cannot be inferred from an exam made by a lot of short-answer or multiple choice questions. A competency can only be demonstrated if the individuals have to make a concrete production where they themselves have to give it a structure. (Cited in UNESCO, 2010)."

Leaving our argument a side at this level, we will now concentrate on the methods and tips as to how other students could come up to such a prestigious level in their future examinations.

Test anxiety is the main issue, according to my view that comes up all the time in a students' mind. Lots of students invariably experience some level of stress near or at the time of examination. Test anxiety is when there is such an extreme stress level that a number of severe physical and/or emotional responses occur. Whether you have test anxiety or test stress, there are things you can do to take control and improve the situation.

Test stress

Let me offer some thoughts in this area based on my experience. In the first instance, without any argument I am prepared to fall in line with most experts who say that these types of stress is due to the lack of proper planning and/or lack of preparation. It is a very pity situation if a student coming out of the examination hall tells that the time was inadequate to answer all the questions in the paper.

This happens mainly due to the above stated two reasons which are the lack of planning and/or lack of preparation. There is an old but true saying that those who do not prepare for success are preparing for failure. Passing your exams with high marks is not a particularly difficult task. The successful student plans his or her exam long before the actual due date. So, one of the ways to reduce test anxiety is to find better ways to assess what will be on an exam and prepare for it effectively. Another way is to learn techniques for relaxation, like breathing exercises, positive self-talk, and guided visualisations, so the student can deal with the stress when starts to interfere.

If a student, however, has experienced extreme stress reactions (like nausea or panic), It is always better to refer them to a professional counsellor who render services free of charge. Professional counsellors are very experienced and skilled at helping students to deal with this chronic problem. For the other students who feel that they are far behind their targets, we will briefly discuss as to how they should prepare for an exam in a rational and efficient manner. To do this, we first need to know where you stand in terms of the exam date. The best way to handle an upcoming exam differs depending on how much time you have to study.

Four months to go

For the Advanced Level examination, you have only four months or little more/less to prepare while for the Ordinary Level examination eight months or more/less to prepare.

By looking at the number of months, you will feel that you will have adequate time to prepare for the examination. Please do not be fooled with the fact that you have a lot of time left before the actual writing of the test. If you think so, you will be tempted to procrastinate and cheat yourself that you are going to study tomorrow. Please remember you are having today for a better tomorrow. Please do not postpone the inevitable.

Process of planning

Spend the first day of four months formulating your strategy. This is known as the process of planning.

Please make a list of required reading for the examination. Skim through the entire textbook and try to produce a reading schedule and a preliminary deadline for when you need to be finished with the reading of the book. The deadline is important; make sure you stick to it.

Preparing for exams

For an example, take a book which contains 210 pages plus a few handouts and practice notes. At an average of 10 pages per day, one will conclude the entire book in about three weeks. This leaves you about one week to review everything. Similarly, the balance two books ( Only three subjects for A/L) depending on the volume of pages each has, you are required to a make proper plan in the balance time of each day.

Remember to specify a deadline for when all of the reading needs to have been completed. Make sure this deadline is - if possible - at least one week before the exam date. This way, you will have time to revise what you have learned. This is how knowledge sticks. It is through the medium of repetition in which information becomes knowledge and knowledge becomes wisdom.

A key strategy for preparing for exams is to try to predict test questions and then practice answering them.

Emergency mode

Emergency mode means that you will have to put anything that is not as important as passing this exam to the side! That means that you will most likely have to forget about meeting friends, going out for shopping, leisure activities, sport and so forth. For the next few days, you will need to eat, sweat and breathe the topic that you are studying.

We should plan to cover the most important parts first, knowing well enough that we might have to skip some parts. It is the survival mode and in survival mode you think about the essentials first and foremost.

Study without anxiety

Start studying, cover all the essential parts first and make sure you have mastered them. Once you have learned these, you are ready to move on to the more advanced examples/chapters. Do not waste any time what so ever doing anything that is deemed less important than your studies. Until the exam date, you must be focused on passing the exam as a ranker.

If you follow the above advices without any deviations, no doubt, you will be the next ranker.