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So how does anxiety gradually increase?

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This is something that you have to understand.

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Test anxiety is not something that just happens during the exam.

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It's actually something that builds over time and it builds over time unchecked.

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Meaning like right now some of you are studying for the exam or studying for the Philippines.

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PT And right now in your study process, your anxiety is building unchecked, which means you're doing

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nothing about it.

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And then when you take the exam, the exam is the end result of that anxiety building.

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And so one of the biggest mistakes the students make is that in their preparation process, in their

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study process, they're not doing anything.

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They're not practicing or managing their test anxiety.

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Or learning how to do it.

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And so a lot of you are walking in there at an increased level.

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So in looking at how anxiety ratchets up, right?

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As soon as you examine, as soon as you register for the exam and begin your preparation, the anxiety

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starts.

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Then you might start thinking about why the exam is required.

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Then during your doing your practice, you might be getting some poor practice results.

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Anxiety is building, building, building, building.

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Then you have some pre exam student comments, comments from other students that have no idea what they're

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talking about or people putting more pressure on you or you're getting you're getting pressure from

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parents or pre exam student comments or comments from others.

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And that is anxiety peaks right before the exam.

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And then during the exam there's a catastrophic failure.

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And a lot of people don't understand that it's a it's a building process.

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Now, some of you are caught in a kind of test anxiety cycle.

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Like, I have a lot of students that have taken the exam six times, five times, four times before

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they get to me.

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Right.

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It's very rare that after I teach somebody, they have to take the test exam again.

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Not unless they just are trying to really achieve super marks.

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Like I have some students that get on the exam, they get an eight and they're like, I want to take

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it again because I want a nine.

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Okay, great.

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You know, more power to you or I have students being told what to do the same thing.

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But there are people that before they come to me and there are some of you in this class right now that

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have taken the exam twice, three times, four times already.

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So what ends up happening is, in terms of a cycle, you have a test failure because of that test failure.

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You have test anxiety.

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Because of that anxiety, you can't study effectively.

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Then you're under or unprepared for the exam.

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Then you have more test anxiety.

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Then that interferes with your test performance.

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Test performance when you take it again.

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And so for those of you that have taken the exam more than once, two times, three times, you're going

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through this this anxiety cycle.

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Over and over again.

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And so if you took the test before and you failed and you failed.

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Right.

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Right here, right after that failure, that's when you need to start breaking your anxiety.

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You have to start breaking.

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You have to start getting control over it or else you're going to get caught in that cycle.

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So how do we recognize test anxiety?

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This is really important because most of us kind of know how to recognize it.

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But in your practicing, in your study and your practicing during the exam is critical that you recognize

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when the anxiety is starting because you don't want it to overwhelm you.

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So when you see these signs is important that whatever technique you're using, you employ it, then

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right?

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Then get control over the monster before the monster eats you alive.

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So when we talk about recognizing test anxiety.

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You want to ask yourself a few questions?

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You know, do you experience fear, anxiety or helplessness before during a test?

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Do you procrastinate on your studying because you fear performing badly?

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Have you performed poorly on the test in the past and fear repeating their performance?

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Do you blank out or have trouble concentrating during during an exam?

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If you say yes to any degree, if you say yes to any degree to these questions, then most likely you

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suffer to some level of anxiety.

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So in terms of the symptoms you have.

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Some physical symptoms.

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And then, of course, you have some emotional symptoms in terms of the physical.

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If you start sweating, nausea, losing focus, increase heartbeat, short breath.

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Freezing.

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Your mind goes blank.

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Headaches.

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That's a physical sign that.

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Anxiety is getting hold to you if you're feeling impending doom, self-doubt, fear, stress, hopeless

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feeling, inadequate panic attacks.

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Those are some of the affective or the emotional signs.

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That anxiety is starting to take you over.

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And when this starts, the earlier you catch it, the easier it is to control.

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So some of you were asking me a question earlier about what's the zone?

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Where do you want to be?

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Everyone needs some stress to perform at their peak.

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I told you that.

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If you if you can sit down and have a conversation with Michael Jordan, he would tell you, yeah,

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I feel stressed.

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Of course I do.

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Of course Renaldo feels stressed.

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Mercy feels stress.

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Beyonce feels stress.

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But where you want to be is right.

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You can see the peak right here.

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This is where you want to be, right?

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You don't want to have no stress.

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Because of you if you have no stress.

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Then you're not going to reap.

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The peak performance is where the stress exists.

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And then, of course, the problem is that some people go over the peak and they go down into extreme

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anxiety.

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But a little bit of nervousness is helpful.

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What it does is it makes you mentally alert and ready to tackle the challenge.

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There is a direct link between your arousal or your anxiety and performance.

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However, like I say it, if it keeps increasing, if it keeps increasing, like it ratchets up and

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you're not able to hold it right here, you have to hold it here.

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See a lot of those students that are getting 8 to 9 on the aisles or getting a 26 plus on the Tofel.

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They're able to hold it right here.

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For many students that are not getting those marks.

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What happens is it goes up.

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It keeps going up.

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It goes into the Goldilocks zone.

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And then it keeps on getting increases more and more, more, more and more.

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So once it crosses the line, that's when it starts to interfere with your test performance.

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That's when that extreme or excessive fear makes it a challenge for you to concentrate.

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Then you struggle.

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You can't recall your strategy, and then you start wasting time and other types of negative actions

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begin to happen.

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So that's what I was talking about in terms of the zone.

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The goal is not no stress.

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The goal is maintaining stress in the in the Goldilocks zone.

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So what's the impact of test anxiety?

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Test anxiety impacts two types of students.

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It impacts high achiever students and also unprepared students.

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The unprepared students everybody is clear on.

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Everybody knows, well, you're in the exam.

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You didn't study.

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You're not prepared.

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So, of course, you feel anxiety.

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But then you also have the high achiever students.

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You have the students that have in university.

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They've gotten excellent grades all their life.

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There are high achievers.

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They have high expectations of themselves and they're perfectionists.

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And whenever I have a student that's a perfectionist, I get worried because perfectionism is a big,

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big hindrance to doing well on this exam.

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You have to recognize that if you are a high achiever student, that you have certain traits.

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They're going to make it more likely for you to suffer from anxiety problems.

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Most of the time it comes from you putting pressure on yourself.

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And so, you know, you have to really be able to know who you are and then knowing that, start working

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on managing your anxiety.

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So test anxiety affects you during the test.

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Prior to the exam.

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It inhibits your ability to recall or use information.

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And then very often anxiety has the impact of giving you a poor understanding and association of the

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content.

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So the impact of anxiety.

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You know, when you talk about something inhibiting your ability to recall or to.

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Use information.

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That directly impacts their performance on the aisles or on the full exam.

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If you're not able to have an understanding and association of the content and the questions that directly

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impacts your performance.

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A lot of you are not doing well because of anxiety, has nothing to do with a lack of strategy.

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So many times students think there's something they don't know and what they don't know is they don't

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know themselves.

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They don't realize, you know, I have this thing over here that if I just take care of that, my score

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will increase.

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So let's talk about some general causes of test anxiety.

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Common causes fear of failure.

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That's a big one.

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Prior bad test experiences, be it the running clock 204 I'll deal with that clock running.

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That increases anxiety.

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That's why I recommend to students over and over and over again.

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Simulate the exam, simulate the clock.

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Stop being in a fantasyland.

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Too many students.

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I see it all the time.

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Doing listening or doing.

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Reading without a clock.

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Doing.

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Writing without a clock.

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And then they always say, okay, later on, later on, I'll start.

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I'll start.

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It's like, No.

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You know, you have to simulate that.

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It's not something that you just simulate one week before the exam.

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The threat of evaluation is the big cause, overthinking the exam and of course, not being prepared.

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Some uncommon causes.

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Some causes you may not have heard or considered that can result in increased anxiety.

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Number one, wanting to be right.

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These are my perfectionists.

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These are my perfectionists right here wanting to be right.

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You won't believe how much wanting to be right causes you to be wrong.

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Forgetting or more importantly, not trusting your techniques.

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I have a lot of students.

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And some of the students that don't do well are students that don't trust their technique, like they'll

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use the techniques that I teach them in practice and they get really good results in practice.

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Then they get in the real exam and they don't trust their technique.

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They start overeating, overthinking, searching, searching, trying to find out why wrong answers

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are correct.

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Great not trusting techniques that that increases their anxiety room intimidation.

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Listening to idiots.

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Bad advice.

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Poor study habits and not able to let go.

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What I mean by not able to let go is you find the right answer choice and then you're not able to let

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go and move on to the next question.

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Right.

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You're not able to let go.

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Your anxiety increases.

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So then when your anxiety increases, you start checking for bad answers or checking for wrong answers,

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or trying to figure out how to make a wrong answer.

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Right.

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All that happens because of these anxiety, increasing elements.

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All right.

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So before I move on and talk about a couple other things, are there any questions?

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I've been speaking for a while, and I want to take any questions right now about anything that I've

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mentioned so far.

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Everybody in terms of the directions this class is going to be upset before the class is going to be

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recorded.

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But I don't see any other new questions.

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So.

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All right, Manuel.

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Manuel knows himself.

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I've been talking about being a perfectionist, and Manuel has a question because he says he's a perfectionist.

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So, Manuel, go ahead and ask your question and then I'll come back to the chat box later on and answer

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your question.

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Okay, Manuel.