DO TESTS EXERT UNNECESSARY PRESSURE ON YOUNG LEARNERS?

Lina Alejandra Arias Castro

Janeth Milena Emayusa Rodríguez

DO TESTS EXERT UNNECESSARY PRESSURE ON YOUNG LEARNERS?

To begin, we must understand academic stress as any negative emotion that a student may feel
based on an academic situation. This can happen in stressful situations, for example, exams; it is
normal to have feelings of fear or anxiety in these cases, since they usually carry a high academic
consequence, therefore failure cannot be an option. It’s also really important to know that
academic stress is different than normal stress, this is because academic stress is a daily situation
which makes it harder to control.

Tests or exams do affect on the daily life of students, on their emotions. Even if you prepare
yourself as much as you can, the nerves and anxiety will always be an important factor to take into
account. According to Bauseda (1995) in the week of exams, the stress of the students usually
increases, but not only this, these emotional changes can have more serious repercussions on
health (insomnia, vomiting, dizziness, etc.) which can further lower the student's performance.
This is a fact that can be verified with several studies, for example a study carried out in Spain by
Hernández in 2005, on a sample of 28,559 students from 16 Spanish universities, 20.84% of the
students said they had these experiences and sensations when the exam season approached.

Nevertheless, what is the solution to this problem? Erase exams from the education system?
The answer is no, everything can be better with an intervention program, for example the one
made by Álvarez and other authors (2008), it has 4 principal steps:

1. Adopt healthy lifestyle habits, especially during exam times.

2. Have an effective technique of studying.

3. Have enough motivation.

4. Make a mental preparation (Breathing and relaxation)

On the other hand, Jacobson's progressive relaxation and Schultz autogenic training are self-
applied programs that contain another strategies:

- Self-assessment.
- Self-applied pre exam anxiety test and more.
DO TESTS EXERT UNNECESSARY PRESSURE ON YOUNG LEARNERS?

In conclusion, there is a relationship between stress and anxiety with academic performance,
however, this has strategies to be counteracted.