Students who suffer test anxiety may improve their exam results by writing about their worries first (11th Article)

Wendy Owen
"Students who suffer test anxiety may improve their exam results by writing about their worries first"
The Oregonian
March 10, 2011
URL: http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/index.ssf/2011/03/students_who_suffer_test_anxie.html

Summary: This article is about ways to ease students' pressure from tests. There are many ways suggested, such as eating a good breakfast and getting plenty of sleep before the tests. Now there is a research shows that students can write down their worries before taking tests, which will help them improve testing scores. The study focused on ninth graders. Students who have high pressure can benefit from writing their worries. But students with low pressure can not benefit from it. The assessment coordinator Ann Zitzelsberger in Tualatin High School was good at reading students' stress. She will give students notes saying "relax" or "you can do it" to encourage them. Other ways also mentioned in this article like dancing before the test.
Intended audience: Students, teachers, parents
Key points: 1. At that moment where they want to show their best work, they often don't.
2. The researchers found that worries about tests compete for the brain's working memory, which is used for performance.
3. About 25 percent of students suffer from a high level of test anxiety and could be helped.
Relevance: It is interesting to read this article. I totally understand students who get nervous before taking tests. Things happened in China when I was a student. Many students are trained by teachers as good test takers. There are students who got too nervous to pass tests. "Luckily", I was trained as a good test taker too. Many methods used by parents to help their kids pass tests. For example, when the university entrance exam was coming, parents would wait for their children outside school gate while they were taking the tests for about 3 hours. It was such a big deal that if students failed in the first test, their following tests would be affected. There were tragedies happened when students did not do well on their scores. I really don't want to see similar things happen here in America. Test scores are truly not a big deal, but students have to have good scores to go to college. Whose fault is it to put pressure on students?