BACKGROUND OF TEST ANXIETY

“Test Anxiety is a state of mind when one is filled with intense apprehension or fear of real or imagined negative outcomes towards a test situation.”

Taking tests is an important part of a student’s life—young people strive for high test scores in school just as adult strive for successful careers in society. While studying just to pass examinations is clearly not a healthy attitude in the first place, parents often unwittingly communicate their high expectations to their young, and add to their anxiety. Many children soon develop the psychological conditions of test anxiety over their school performance, and in particular, over their test scores.

CAUSES OF TEST ANXIETY

Some possible causes of test anxiety could be not keeping up with studies for a period of time, excessive negative thoughts about failing, self-doubts about one’s own abilities, or previous failures which had shaken the students’ confidence.

Sometimes, students may develop test anxiety because family oriented problems such as fighting between parents, financial hardship, excessive pressure from parents, friends or the school, sibling rivalry, and so on.

WHY WE NEED TO TAKE TEST ANXIETY SERIOUSLY

More than 50% Singaporean students suffers from test anxiety when examinations draw near!

Test Anxiety may lead to a child or student not wanting to go to school, or may give rise to feelings of excessive sadness or depression, loss of interest or enthusiasm about life, and even to suicidal thoughts.

Test Anxiety tends to leads to further complications such as a loss of self-worth, to social phobias where the child or students develops a high level of anxiety, or fears for social interactions.

Test Anxiety acts as a mental block to students who suffer from them. It creates a “noise” which impairs the ability to comprehend and reason, and which blocks the brain’s ability to retrieve information stored in the memory.

During test, students experience difficulties remembering the facts they have learnt, focusing on the task at hand, or understanding and answering questions. This is similar to a computer hard disk crash where no amount of effort will yield any result.

HOW TO FIGHT OFF TEST ANXIETY?

The Centre for Cognitive Technologies (CCT) is a psychological training company that specialises in research based programmes. We offer the highly popular workshop “FIGHTING OFF TEST ANXIETY” to help your students beat examination stress.

The Test Anxiety workshop will be conducted by Mr Teo Yew Chye, a qualified psychologist and former researcher with the Psychology Department, University of Western Australia. He has more than 10 years of training experiences in Singapore, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc.

Noteworthy, Yew Chye is also the author of the highly acclaimed book “FIGHTING OFF TEST ANXIETY” (Pearson Publishing) that is sold in both Singapore and Taiwan.

“FIGHTING OFF TEST ANXIETY” workshop has been conducted in many local institutions including Victoria School, Yishun Town Secondary School, Anderson Junior College, Temasek Junior College to name a few. This highly popular workshop has helped more than 3000 students in beating their exam stress!