Test Prep Books/Effective Study Skills for Test Taking Anxiety

New Year’s greetings to everyone, far and wide!  May it be a year of peace, health and prosperity for all.

Since the beginning of a new year is usually filed with resolutions– which are really thinly disguised attempts to change habits — I’m going to begin the year with a series of posts on habits.

Habits determine the quality of our lives. And they are fundamental if you want to reduce your stress around taking tests.

Life is made up of habits. Think about it. As you are reading this you are breathing (whether you are aware of your breath or not).  As Read the rest of this entry »

As I write this I am in south India at an Ayurvedic retreat.  Ayurveda is the oldest system of healing arts known to man. It dates back thousands of years to the writing of the Vedas, or ancient texts.

One of the pillars of this remarkably comprehensive and far-reaching system is to establish and maintain balance of body, mind and spirit. Since this corresponds so directly with the work I do as a stress psychologist I want to take a moment, at year’s end, review this foundational aspect of good health.  Let’s start out with  Read the rest of this entry »

According to a new study, mild activities, like chewing gum, before a test can be helpful in improving test performance.

Comparing the effects of chewing gum before or during various testing situations, researchers found that performance on a battery of cognitive tasks improved for those who chewed gum for five minutes before a test, compared with those who didn’t

A report on the study said that scientists “believe the benefits of chewing Read the rest of this entry »

With this post I’d like to address the questions that come across my desk– by email from readers of my book, and at the talks that I give to various audiences (parents, students, teachers, etc).

 

 

Today’s question is:  How do I get rid of my anxiety before an exam?

Answer: You don’t get “rid” of anxiety. A little bit of anxiety has been shown (in over a hundred years of research) to be a good thing. Remember the “Yerkes-Dodson curve” (see illustration).  Yerkes and Dodson were two psychologists who showed, at the beginning of the 20th century, that there’s a direct relationship between stress and performance. Too much or too little stress and performance suffers. You Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve recently started coaching three very different people who have exactly the same issue with tests: they’re all afraid of failing.  To be accurate, they’re all afraid of failing again.

Each of them (a high school, college and graduate student) had a bad experience in the past with a test—one didn’t finish in time, one didn’t get the score she wanted and one actually failed.  I’m using the word “bad experience” instead of “failure.”  While every one of us has had a bad experience with a test none of us is a failure because of it.

Following what I wrote in my last post: when you have a bad experience you have two choices with how you are going to hold that experience.  Choice #1: You say to yourself, “Oh, no,  it happened before and it’s going to happen again. For sure. No way I’m going to Read the rest of this entry »

When I was a young child — 9 years old to be exact– my parents sent me on a plane, alone, to visit my beloved aunt in Florida. It was exciting to travel by myself and I was treated royally by the flight crew.

Somewhere along the way the plane got into a big storm and started bouncing around terribly. This was in the days of prop planes, much smaller than the ones today and much more vulnerable to bad weather. The turbulence got worse and worse and the plane was now getting thrown around in the sky, People started screaming. I was so scared. My aunt said that when I got off the plane in Miami and ran into her arms she saw that I had bitten clear through my bottom lip.

This event had a terrible effect on me for years every time I went into an airplane . For days Read the rest of this entry »

I was introduced to an interesting blog today and the post was apt for this site  “Do You Every Really Leave High School?” and it’s from the blog RealDelia: Finding Yourself in Adulthood,” written by  an American-born journalist in London, Delia Lloyd.  The post focuses on the anxiety dreams many of us continue to have about tests.   In my 35 years as I performance psychologist I’ve heard so many dreams about test anxiety that I’ve lost count. When I was a young child–just around the time I started school — I started having a full-blown nightmare about taking tests. The dream all took place on an enormous sheet of lined paper, the older kind with the red margin running up and down the left side. The teacher– something of a Alice in Wonderland Red Queen type — was standing at the top line, looking very imperious and scary. I had to go up to the top line on the page  and answer a question. My Jungian analyst friends would probably have a field day with this day, but Read the rest of this entry »

At the Apple store in Seattle I got into an interesting conversation with Richard Wyne, from Whistler, B.C., Canada. Richard is the head of a company called Polar Solutions, which is in the business of disaster management and emergency preparedness.  They save people’s lives. Talk about stress and performance!. Locating and saving a person trapped in a building, or under an avalanche of snow requires the epitome of being calm, confident and focused.  I met Richard with his trusted partner, Nora, a Senior Avalanche Rescue Dog (German Shepard, Border Collie X). I would love to see them in action.  If your job requires you to keep stress at an optimal level let us know what it is.  I’d love to see Richard and Nora in action (check out their website), and the necessity for them to remain calm,confident and focused. Richard was interested in The Workbook for Test Success, and I look forward to sharing ideas an experiences with him, and with you. Tell us about your stress-related work.

Something came across my desk today which I want to applaud and call your attention to. It’s a posting by the McNamara Academic Center at the University of Minnesota with helpful tips for test anxiety.

This kind of help is so useful for two important reasons: (1) it’s sound advice, and (2) it shows that there is help and you don’t need to feel alone if you are suffering from test anxiety.

I encourage you to take advantage of the Read the rest of this entry »

The Silicon Valley Mercury News today published an article today about the SAT and ACT. Author Purvy Mody starts off by saying “The words SAT and ACT can conjure anxiety for even the most academically confident student. Standardized testing has become so talked about and so prepared for that I have heard of fifth-graders enrolling in SAT prep classes — something I am highly against.”

5th graders prepping for the SAT?  AYK?  (are you kidding?)

Mody ends the article with this: “Take a class if you need the structure, or get the official books and practice on your own. Whatever method you use, the most important thing is Read the rest of this entry »