Most students regularly become excessively nervous before and during an exam. If you are that type of student, you may have “testophobia”. It is mostly called “examinophobia” or “exam fever”. It is a very common phenomenon among students most especially when an important examination is at their door step. It is disheartening that exam fever affects a lot of students psychologically, socially, emotionally and cognitively. It affects different people at all stages of life from elementary students, secondary students, university students and even adults writing professional exams.
It is not something that can be easily eliminated as long as EXAMINATION is still in existence. In most cases, it is caused by the fear of failing and some other reasons which I will highlight below.
1. Inadequate Preparation. Inadequate preparation is one of the reasons that brings fear into the minds of students when exam is approaching. This in most cases occur to students who have not covered a vast area of the course or subject syllabus. It also affects those who are not active in classes or students who haven’t been properly taught. This could be due to their lack of understanding of the subject syllabus.
It could also be as a result of dyslexia, memory lock, psychological stress, panic attack, etc. The students who find themselves in any of the above ‘bracket’ always find their hearts beat profoundly anytime they hear the word “Examination”.
2. Irrational and fallacious believes. Some students minds are full of all strains of fallacious and irrational believes. Fears like “if I fail, my parents will kill me” or “I must score 100% or I am worthless”. Some of them do not believe in their own abilities to pass. Also, catastrophic believes like ” no matter how I prepare, I will fail the subject”. These believes also make students to be panicky about examinations.
3. Pressure. Pressure contributes lots of fear into students’ heart doing an examination. It could be pressure from parents, teachers, relatives, guidance counselor etc. It makes them shivery doing exams. It is almost the same with irrational believes because they are mostly influenced by the pressure mounted on them.
4. The fear of failing. Another reason why students fear exams is the fear of failing. The fear that they may not score up to their desired mark or the pass mark always create a very high degree of fear in them. It is something that keeps them worrying almost every time to the extent that it drains their ability to concentrate while reading. M. P. Ossa was once asked “what is the cause of examination fear in students?”. He simply replied “I think for a lot of students, it is the fear of failure rather than the exam itself which causes all the anxiety” and that’s just the truth.
