Test Prep Books/Effective Study Skills for Test Taking Anxiety

What's your body doing?

Let’s start out with this rule of thumb: 

When you are thinking of of an upcoming test (or anything else in the future), remember to breathe.

Here’s a very common experience for test-takers:  “My test is next Tuesday (or tomorrow). YIKES!” Your heart rate goes up, your blood starts rushing, your stomach wrenches. You know the routine.

I don’t know about you, but often, when I’m thinking about something that I have coming up later today or tomorrow or next week (and it doesn’t have to be as stressful as a test), I find myself getting a little amped up. What do I mean by “amped up”?  Read the rest of this entry »

Value added? Think again

As the Obama administration rolls out the funding for its Race for the Top, a good deal of attention is being paid to value added measures for calculating teachers salaries. Simply put: teachers in many areas will be paid based on their students’ test scores.  Like everything, there are pros and cons. But for a person who’s concerned with the effects of stress on performance, and until certain things about value added measures are rethought,  I’m going to give this two thumbs decidedly down.

A good, brief comprehensive summary on the problems with value added measures is by cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham. Of the

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The quote above is the title of a blog post by NY City Councilman Mark Weprin, in YourName.com.

In a short but impassioned statement Weprin states: “[High stakes tests] are likely to reflect the rampant use of test-preparation drills that keep scores high but rob students of the opportunity for real learning. I am not participating in the hand-wringing over lower percentages of students deemed proficient because I reject the premise that high-stakes standardized tests ever provided

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Send us your comments

Today I received an email from Cecilia M, a person who has attempted taking a professional qualifying exam many times. Here is her email:

Hello, Dr B.

I just read your book. Thank you for writing it . I have been taking the National Dental board for years, yes for for years!! I’ve done Part One may be ten times, and the more I tried to passed it the more anxious I became (I identified with each one of the cases you described in the book), so I stopped trying for three years until I decided to take it again. I prepared for at least four months…

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A close friend of mine — a nurse at an inner city high school –  told me the following story…

“I was in my office and an 11th grader came in all distraught worked up.  This is one tough kid– she’s had many troubles in her life, and has gotten into a lot of trouble too. She’s usually closed down and angry.  On the day she came into my office she was very upset — she’d had had a bad fight with a close friend who rejected her. She was angry and ready to strike out. I didn’t know what to do with her. She couldn’t sit still.  When I glimpsed The Workbook for Test Success …

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Anxiety: where are you feeling it?

This week I had an experience I’d like to tell you about.

I have a summer engagement working with professional actors who are recording the voices to a well-known video game.

In the middle of one of the recording sessions I found myself starting to worry about something. What I was worrying about isn’t the point here. The point is I was…

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If you’re a student, summer is a good time to take stock of  your habits, particularly what kind of habits help you to succeed, and what habit hinder your progress.

One of the least helpful habits is comparing yourself to others – your classmates, your siblings, your parents,  celebrities you idolize (athletes, musicians, actors).  Have you noticed

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One of the chief ways we become distracted is by our own thinking. We start thinking about the past or the future or about something else other than what’s going on now, in the present. When we’re distracted we lose focus and then it’s much harder to progress towards our goals.  Our stress goes up and our performance is compromised –  whether it’s on a test or when we’re facing any challenge in life. We literally fall off the path.

An example of this is when we become distracted by our own old fears. I can’t handle this, I’m not good enough, I can’t keep it together…and other negative thinking. “Negative” here means minus-ing, taking away from.  But taking

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Are you tense?

At a recent lecture I gave at the University of California San Francisco medical school, I was teaching the first year students how to use the calming tools:  breathing, grounding and sensing.

Breathing is by far the most important of all 9 tools in the performance model. So much has been said and written about breathing, and no wonder!  When we don’t breathe regularly it causes all sorts of mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual problems.

After we worked on grounding, one of the students had a brilliant observation.  First, to remind you:

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Use a timer: you'll stay focused

Often people ask me “What’s the best way to stay focused?”

Here’s what I recommend:  use a timer. Whether it’s on your digital watch, your i-pad, your cell phone, or one that you set up on your computer, I’ve found the timer to be my biggest aide to staying focused.

The procedure goes like this:

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