Exam Season: The Write Way to Prepare

Come every exam, there’s always that same awful feeling of dread that awaits, behind those looming lecture hall doors. Why can’t we shake it off? We’ve done exams before. We studied (or so we think). We kept up with readings….so why do we still feel this way? Go chew gum. Go take a walk. Common tips like those do some to ease our anxiety - what else can we add to our arsenal to counteract test anxiety?

Shen et al. investigated an intriguing method to put to practice whenever exam season creeps up on us. Involving the simple act of writing, and focusing on detailing positive emotions, this positive oriented approach was tested on a group of Chinese high school students, a sample that has empirically been proven to experience higher test anxiety and weariness than their peers. Clearly, this was an ideal population to explore this method’s potential effectiveness on.

Utilizing Sarason’s Test Anxiety Scale, a questionnaire designed to measure its namesake, and analyzing student’s written pieces over a 30 day period, the researchers kept a close eye as to if anxiety levels improved over this duration. One group was designated to write about positive emotions felt daily, and the control group was instructed to simply write about their daily activities.

Fitting their hypotheses, the findings first demonstrated that the students did indeed experience an initial high level of test anxiety, and that in the positive emotion writing group, students’ test anxiety levels dropped to a level that was significantly lower than the control group. Specifically, the researchers noticed that towards the end of the study period, students in the positive emotion group had increasingly used more positive emotion in their writing, alongside elevated awareness of their thoughts and feelings. This all had culminated in lower test anxiety for these students.

Expressive writing has already been demonstrated to be effective for test anxiety and improving performance, but Shen et al’s results expand on prior literature, and illustrate the vital role that positive mindsets can play in the efficacy of this method. Evidently, positively themed writings are the way to go.

Given the ease of this technique, it shows great promise as a little trick to pull out of your sleeve anytime those feelings of worry arise prior to game day. So before you go conquer your next exam, pull out your pencil, and warm your hands and thoughts up by detailing some positive thoughts and your own awareness of them.

The findings in this study push forward the recent advent of positive psychology, and fuels hope that we continue to find more interventions rooted in this domain to effectively deal with the numerous mental health stressors students experience.

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Source:

• Shen, L., Yang, L., Zhang, J., & Zhang, M. (2018). Benefits of expressive writing in reducing test anxiety: A randomized controlled trial in Chinese samples. PloS one, 13(2), e0191779.