Anxiety in children and teenagers is rapidly increasing
Abstract
Anxiety in children and teenagers is rapidly increasing because of our educational system using test as a way of measuring knowledge how much a student knows. The more test that are being thrown at students will raise the anxiety level in those said students because they will have to set aside their after-school activities to study for a test that the student may or may not fail. Test and quizzes are not the only factors that provokes anxiety, Students want to fit in in their society that also can lead to a rise in anxiety levels in students. Students want to make friends and have relationships during a school year to have someone to talk to during classes or in between classes. Trying to make friends is not easy a task when you new to a school or just antisocial that also can rise levels of anxiety.
- Introduction
Anxiety levels in students may increase majorly due to the imposing of the education system based tests to the students. This type of anxiety that emanates from education system based tests is commonly referred to as “student test anxiety”. Usually, anxiety levels in students differ. There are those students whose levels are low and there are those whose levels are high. Many researches have shown that a little anxiety level is good as it acts as it motivates students by pushing them to perform well. Under other conditions, high anxiety levels in students can cause a disturbance to their mental skills, making them to lose concentration in test questions, leading to poor performance. This research paper, expounds on text anxiety, its causes, effects and how to control it.
Thesis statement
The current educational system is causing the students across the world to be overwhelmed and filled with anxiety. One of the main points that a person can come up with when he or she hears of student stress is education system based tests. Students get a sizeable amount of homework nowadays, causing them to forget about their own personal life to complete those assessments, though the latter doesn’t apply to every student. However, doing all of our assessments while working is not an easy task as it can make us to get filled up with anxiety.
- Body
Student test anxiety refers to a type of performance anxiety that is characterized by psychological distress, academic failure, and insecurity about succeeding academically.
Symptoms of student test anxiety
Based on the researches that have been carried out by various scholars, there are four forms of symptoms of the anxiety that results from the education system based tests. They include; corporeal symptoms, behavior-based symptoms, cognitive-based symptoms, and emotional-based symptoms. The corporeal-based symptoms are nausea, shaking and sweating, rapid heartbeat and fainting. Additionally, there are those mild occurrences of anxiety which result in some sort of butterflies in their stomachs, whereas more acute occurrences cause physical illness to the students. Cognitive- based symptoms and behavioral-based symptoms include making of nervous movements and avoiding of the testing situations completely. In more severe cases, test anxiety can make the students to abandon their studies as a way of avoiding the tests. The students may also be tempted to engage in substance abuse in an attempt to suppress their increased levels of anxiety by taking downers like alcohol. Many students with test anxiety report leaving blank the questions to their tests, despite of studying thoroughly before the tests and being sure of the answers to the questions. .Cognitive symptoms include having negative self-talks, having trouble when it comes to concentrating to the tests, and having racing thoughts. Emotional symptoms are low self-esteem, depression, and anger. Students often belittle themselves for performing poorly in the tests and always want to get out of the situation.
Causes of student test anxiety
Those students that have experienced test anxiety know very how stressful it can be. However, many of those who have never had an experience of it doubt even its existence. But the truth of the matter is that student test anxiety actually exists, and it is often accompanied by nervousness and lots of fear. Actually, in most of the students, the test anxiety can be so extreme that it lowers their performance ability.
So, what might be the causative agents for student test anxiety? For quite a number of learners, the causes can be a lot of things combined. However the two fundamental causes are mental causes and biological causes.
Mental causes
There are many mental factors that cause student test anxiety, but the ordinary mental factor is the expectations of the students. For instance, if before sitting for test a student believes that he or she is going to fail in that particular test, he or she will become anxious, resulting in poor performance
Also, student anxiety can become a cycle that is vicious in that after a student has experienced anxiety in the first test, he or she may develop the fear of it happening again, resulting to even higher anxiety levels compared to the first time. After the students have endured test anxiety repeatedly, they may start to feel that the situation I now out of their reach, thus they find a lot of difficulty in changing the situation.
Biological causes
During exacting situations like before sitting for the tests and during execution of the tests, the body releases the adrenaline hormone. The purpose of this hormone is to prepare the body to combat what will happen in such situations. The response of this hormone prepares a person to either face the situation head-on or pad the hoofs. In most occurrences, this response of the adrenaline hormone is literally something good as it prepares one to deal with exacting situations in an effective manner, thus ensures that one stay alert always.
However, some students might experience excessive anxiety symptoms which even the adrenaline hormone can’t be able to handle. Usually, nausea and sweating symptoms cause high levels of nervousness.
Other causative agents of anxiety are:
Having a history of poor outcomes in tests. A student can develop a negative attitude towards tests and there will be an increase his anxiety levels in an instance where he had performed poorly in his previous tests, either because of not studying well or because of being so anxious that he couldn’t remember his answers.
Unpreparedness. If a student fails to prepare well for the tests, his feelings of anxiety can increase before sitting for the tests.
Having a fear of failure. If a student has a phobia towards failure, he may inflict pressure on himself, thus causing anxiety.
Effects of student test anxiety
Majorly, student test anxiety affects the performance of students. It can affect any student’s performance, irrespective of the age, gender, the level of grades or ethnic groups. The effects of student test anxiety on the performance of students were explained for the first time using the Yerkes-Dodson law in 1908 According to this law, a special type of curve called “a bell curve”, is used in showing the way anxiety and performance relate. Figure 1(shown below), is a plot of the efficiency of the memory of the students against the anxiety level on the horizontal axis. According to the curve an increase in the anxiety level of a student results in an increase in his memory efficiency, up to the optimum level of the curve. However, further increase in anxiety levels results to a decrease in the memory efficiency of the student, thus rendering him unfunctional. Therefore the test performance of a student will always decrease when his anxiety levels are either very high or very low.
(Figure1)
Many scholars who have researched on anxiety levels, the causes of anxiety and the effects of anxiety in students have proved that when those students that are anxious work with the professional counselors of their school, their performance can be boosted compared to when they work with those professional counselors that they don’t know as such. However, other researchers have shown that the relationship between student’s performance and anxiety levels is negative. According to them, as test anxiety increases, the performance of a student is supposed to decrease.
For instance, according to (Beiter et al., 2015), the performance of students in tests can be affected adversely by their high levels of anxiety, whereas the performance of students can actually be elevated by low anxiety levels. In addition, it was found that an increase in worriedness and irrelevant thinking can impair the students’ conscious thus inhibiting their performance the found that irrelevant thinking and increased worry impaired conscious thought and inhibited performance. Also, they pointed out that the extent at which a task is difficult will determine how a student will perform. As the task becomes more difficult, the more anxious the students become thus resulting in low performance levels as coding, organizing, storing information, and retrieving data will be difficult.
How to overcome student test anxiety
Some of the strategies that can be employed to minimize the anxiety levels in students include:
Preparing well for the tests. A student should adequately study for the tests to attain confidence and comfortability. He shouldn’t wait until a night before sitting for the tests. In case he is not sure of how he is supposed to study, he should ask his parent or teacher to guide him. Preparedness aids in boosting confidence levels, thus lessening anxiety levels as a result.
Getting rid of negative thoughts. A student should get rid of thoughts of defeat such as “I can’t do this” or ” I haven’t studied well for this”. He should avoid them to create room for optimistic ones such as “This test is a piece of cake,” “I am conversant with this things,” and “I have prepared well for this “. This thoughts that are filled with positivity will help the student to manage his anxiety levels when handling the tests.
Sleeping adequately. If a student gets adequate sleep the night before taking the tests, his concentration levels will be boosted and he can remember many things.
Engaging of deep breathing. In case a student begins to get anxious while taking his tests, he should take a deep breath and then go on with handling the questions one after another, while taking deep breaths in between. This will help him to focus and maintain calmness thus reducing anxiety levels.
Avoid trying to be perfect. A student should never expect himself to perfect as everyone does mess up once in a while or even often but after all, it is okay to blunder. Instead, he should concentrate on doing his very best and not perfectly. This will aid in minimizing his anxiety levels.
Establishing of pretest routine that is consistent. A student should learn about what will work for him and he should follow similar procedures each time the tests are nearing. This will reduce his stress levels and aid in ensuring that he is well prepared.
Studying in similar places. It’s better for a student to study a little bit over a long period of time instead of cramming all of the information at once. Also, using similar places to study will help him or her to remember the information he or she needs when taking the tests.
Don’t forget to eat and drink. The student should feed well and drink lots of water before taking the tests for his brain to function correctly.
- Conclusion
Conclusively, as seen above, the tests imposed on students by teachers may raise the anxiety levels of the students, thus affecting the performance of those students at times. To regulate these effects, the teachers should teach their students the ways of overcoming their anxieties. Additionally, they should regulate the number of tests administered.