In these times of increasing competition, students find it difficult to keep their cool and manage their anxiety level. So i taught of updating on this subject...
Some of the questions u ask your self before an Exam are
-will I pass?
- Do I know enough?
-Will I be able to remember well?
-What if they ask some thing I don’t know.
These kind of questions cause uncertainty. The more u think of these types of questions, the more likely it will be that your physical response will be an increase in anxiety leading to an increased feeling of being left out.
Almost everyone feels nervous before an exam. Butterflies in the stomach and worrying thoughts - 'Will I be able to answer the questions?' 'Have I done enough revision?' - are indications of exam nerves that are probably familiar to all students. In fact, a certain amount of nervous tension probably helps us perform to the best of our ability, producing a rush of adrenaline that helps us to feel alert and focused. But too much anxiety can BLOCK thoughts, create a negative frame of mind, and lead to panic and potentially poor exam performance.
It is important to recognize the symptoms of stress and anxiety and do some thing about it.
“It is important to ask your self is my stress/ anxiety realistic and in proportion to how important this exam is”?
Rational Emotive Therapy (The ABC Model)
Rational emotive therapy has been given by Albert Ellis. It is a school of psychotherapy that is based on the assumption that human beings are born with potential for both rational straight thinking and irrational, crooked thinking. People have the tendencies within both to stick with old, dysfunctional behavior patterns and to discover a variety of ways to engage in self sabotage. Humans do not have to be victims of early conditioning. Rational emotive theory asserts that people have vast untapped resources for actualizing their potentials and that they can change their personal and social destinies.
RET insist that blame is the core of emotional disturbances. Therefore if we are to cure neurosis or psychosis, we had better stop blaming ourselves and others, we’d better learn to accept ourselves in spite of the imperfections. Anxiety stems from internal repetition of the sentence “I don’t like my behavior and would like to change” and self blaming sentence “because of my wrong behavior and my mistakes, I am a rotten person and I am to blame, and I deserve to suffer.” According to RET, this anxiety is unnecessary. A person can be helped to see that precise, irrational sentences are false.
The A-B-C theory of personality is central to RET theory and practice. A is the existence of a fact, an event, or behavior or attitude of an individual.C is the emotional consequence or reaction of the individual; the reaction can be either appropriate or inappropriate. A (The activating event) doesn’t cause C (the emotional consequence). Instead B, which is person’s belief about A, causes C, the emotional reaction. For e.g., if a person experiences anxiety before an exams it may not be the exams itself that causes anxiety but the persons beliefs about being a failure, being rejected by peers, parents and loved ones and being worthless. Ellis maintains that beliefs about rejection, being worthless and failure (at point B) causes anxiety (at point C), not the actual event of the exams (at point A). Thus human beings are largely responsible for creating their own emotional reactions and disturbances.
Some of the questions u ask your self before an Exam are
-will I pass?
- Do I know enough?
-Will I be able to remember well?
-What if they ask some thing I don’t know.
These kind of questions cause uncertainty. The more u think of these types of questions, the more likely it will be that your physical response will be an increase in anxiety leading to an increased feeling of being left out.
Almost everyone feels nervous before an exam. Butterflies in the stomach and worrying thoughts - 'Will I be able to answer the questions?' 'Have I done enough revision?' - are indications of exam nerves that are probably familiar to all students. In fact, a certain amount of nervous tension probably helps us perform to the best of our ability, producing a rush of adrenaline that helps us to feel alert and focused. But too much anxiety can BLOCK thoughts, create a negative frame of mind, and lead to panic and potentially poor exam performance.
It is important to recognize the symptoms of stress and anxiety and do some thing about it.
“It is important to ask your self is my stress/ anxiety realistic and in proportion to how important this exam is”?
Rational Emotive Therapy (The ABC Model)
Rational emotive therapy has been given by Albert Ellis. It is a school of psychotherapy that is based on the assumption that human beings are born with potential for both rational straight thinking and irrational, crooked thinking. People have the tendencies within both to stick with old, dysfunctional behavior patterns and to discover a variety of ways to engage in self sabotage. Humans do not have to be victims of early conditioning. Rational emotive theory asserts that people have vast untapped resources for actualizing their potentials and that they can change their personal and social destinies.
RET insist that blame is the core of emotional disturbances. Therefore if we are to cure neurosis or psychosis, we had better stop blaming ourselves and others, we’d better learn to accept ourselves in spite of the imperfections. Anxiety stems from internal repetition of the sentence “I don’t like my behavior and would like to change” and self blaming sentence “because of my wrong behavior and my mistakes, I am a rotten person and I am to blame, and I deserve to suffer.” According to RET, this anxiety is unnecessary. A person can be helped to see that precise, irrational sentences are false.
The A-B-C theory of personality is central to RET theory and practice. A is the existence of a fact, an event, or behavior or attitude of an individual.C is the emotional consequence or reaction of the individual; the reaction can be either appropriate or inappropriate. A (The activating event) doesn’t cause C (the emotional consequence). Instead B, which is person’s belief about A, causes C, the emotional reaction. For e.g., if a person experiences anxiety before an exams it may not be the exams itself that causes anxiety but the persons beliefs about being a failure, being rejected by peers, parents and loved ones and being worthless. Ellis maintains that beliefs about rejection, being worthless and failure (at point B) causes anxiety (at point C), not the actual event of the exams (at point A). Thus human beings are largely responsible for creating their own emotional reactions and disturbances.
How to prepare your self for an exam?
Where to study:
When choosing a place to study one should keep in mind the following factor:
-An environment that is conducive to study.
-reasonable quiet in terms of disturbances caused by vehicle traffic, loud talking, music, television and even the movements of people around.
-adequate light to read and
-a constant supply of oxygen provided by fresh air.
What you need to study:
Your work place should include a table or desk to hold books and stationery, with enough space to write comfortably. Avoid cluttering the study table with books and notes. Not only it proves to be distracting and disturbing, but important papers and notes can be misplaced in the mess. Instead keep only those books and study material connected with the subject being studied at the time.
The posture one adopts while studying is also important. Use a suitable chair which gives support to the shoulders and the small of the back, just above the waist. But, avoid a posture that is too comfortable, like sprawling on the sofa with a soft cushion with a head-rest. Similarly, trying to study while lying in bed is most unwise.
When you should study:
Identify your best studying time- early morning or late night and make maximum use of this time. However, if you rise early, you need to go to bed early and vice versa. Burning the candle at both ends will only prove detrimental in the long run. Students need at least six to seven hours of sleep each night. Hence, keeping late nights when you need to wake up early the next morning is unwise as it affects your performance, concentration and attention.
It is also necessary to sleep well the night before any examination, especially when the paper involves reasoning and thinking like mathematics and science.
How you can concentrate
Have you ever wanted to study, but couldn’t concentrate? The best remedy in this case is to walk up and down or study aloud. Other useful suggestions include changing the location of your study, splashing cold water on your face, having a quick, cold shower and changing into fresh clothes or doing something manual instead.
The study schedule should be divided into periods interspersed with timely breaks. A light snack and little television provide a welcome diversion that is necessary to break the monotony. But never take up anything that is too engrossing so as to tempt you away from your books. The breaks must be long enough to help you feel refreshed, but short enough not to destroy your study mood.
Today, a lots of students study to strains of soft instrumental music. This can be quite therapeutic while doing skill subjects, but is not recommended when tackling memory subjects.
How to utilize your time
Another vital skill needed to succeed in examinations is effective time management. Long telephone calls, whiling your time away watching television, loitering after college, tuition classes and attending parties, marriages and social functions eat into a busy schedule throwing it into disarray. It requires strong will power to resist these temptations.
Framing a time table for the following day helps one organize time. Thus, holidays and study leave can be utilized to their maximum potentials. This can be achieved by breaking up one’s day into block of one and a half-two hours. Allocate a subject to each block and decide the portion you plan to complete within that period. Vary the memory subjects with the skill subjects, keeping the former for when you are fresh, and the latter for when you are likely to be tired or drowsy as in the afternoon. Your time table must include time for meals; tuition classes, etc. above all, stick to it. That is what effective time management all about.
How you can remember
It is unfortunate but true, that memorization is the need of the day, because most examinations today are a test of ones memory. The best way to remember what is learnt is by using the three stage cycle of learn-revise-Repeat. Anything new should be revised within two hours of learning it or else you run the risk of forgetting a large percentage of it.
The same needs to be repeated at the end of the day, the next day and then at regular intervals. Writing out a difficult answer helps us remember better. Keep the long answers and complicated derivations for the night. Study them just before you go to sleep and try recalling them the first thing next morning. Finally, the use of mnemonic or code words is a great help and if students master the art of devising these code words, they are excellent aids to memory.
Some of the mnemonic strategies are:
Categorization or organization:
Arranging the material into categories helps to organize the material, and this in turn raises its probability of recall.
Acronyms:
It is an invented combination of letters. Each letter is a cue to an item you need to remember. For e.g. one example familiar to most school children involves taking the first letter of each word that you want to remember and forming words. This technique can be use to recall the names of rainbow colour (VIBGOYR-Violet, indigo, blue, green, orange, yellow and red). Another e.g. for solving a math’s problem you use PEMDAS- Parenthesis, Exponent, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction.
Acrostic:
It is invented sentence or poem with the first letter as a cue. The first letter of each word is a cue to an idea you need to remember.e.g. For solving a math’s problem you use Please Excuse My Dear Aunty Sally. - Parenthesis, Exponent, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction.
Chaining:
Create a story where each word or idea you have to remember cues the next idea you need to recall.e.g. If you have to remember the words like Napoleon, Ear, door and Germany. You can invent a story of Napoleon with his ear to a door listening to people speak German.
Method of Loci:
It requires the learner to imagine a series of places (loci, or locations) that have some sort of order to them. for e.g. you can use a series of location from home to college and then divide the material you want to remember, mentally picturing the different pieces at different land mark.
Peg word method:
This technique involves picturing the items with a set of ordered “cues”. here the cues are nouns that come from memorized rhyming list: “one is a bun, two is a shoe, three is a tree, four is a door, five is a hive, six is a sticks, seven is a heaven, eight is a gate, nine is a wine, and ten is a hen”. The method calls for the subject to picture the first item interacting with a bun, the second with a shoe, the third with a tree, and so forth. This method works for a list of only 10 or fewer.
How to play it cool:
Students should take down their time table carefully, preferably themselves, noting the subject and the respective date and time. In order to avoid upsetting themselves on the morning of the exams, it is a good idea for students to keep stationery and admit cards ready the previous night and remember to carry them along the examination centre.
How you should present your answers:
Students need to master the art of presenting their answers impressively. Bad handwriting and faint- coloured ink not only renders the answers illegible but also irks the examiners. They get upset with untidy papers (ink blots, cancellations), papers where answers are irrelevant, not correctly numbered or when students indulge in lengthy introductions before answering the questions.
"M.U.R.D.E.R."A Study System
Study is nothing else but a possession of the mind-->Thomas Hobbes1651 English
· Mood:Set a positive mood for yourself to study in.Select the appropriate time, environment, and attitude
· Understand:Mark any information you don't understand in a particular unit;Keep a focus on one unit or a manageable group of exercises
· Recall:After studying the unit,stop and put what you have learned into your own words
· Digest:Go back to what you did not understand and reconsider the information;Contact external expert sources (e.g., other books or an instructor) if you still cannot understand it
· Expand:In this step, ask three kinds of questions concerning the studied material:
o If I could speak to the author, what questions would I ask or what criticism would I offer?
o How could I apply this material to what I am interested in?
o How could I make this information interesting and understandable to other students?
· Review:Go over the material you've covered,Review what strategies helped you understand and/or retain information in the past and apply these to your current studies
Meditation exercise.
Oak Tree Meditation
- Sit in a comfortable position, your arms resting at your sides.
- Close your eyes and breathe deeply. Let your breathing be slow and relaxed.
- See your body as a strong oak tree. Your body is solid like the wide, brown trunk of the tree. Imagine sturdy roots growing from your legs and going down deeply into the earth, anchoring your body. You feel solid and strong, able to handle any stress.
- When upsetting thoughts or situations occur, visualize your body remaining grounded like the oak tree. Feel the strength and stability in your arms and legs.
- You feel confident and relaxed, able to handle any situation.
In conclusion, success in the examinations is well within the reach of every student. The secret lies in utilizing your skills to the best of your capability. As MTV puts it- “It’s easy when you know how”
Paper by: Umme Salma Kandoriwala
