外刊听读| 经济学人 考试焦虑的真正原因

Exam nerves real cause

考试焦虑的真正原因

High Anxiety

高度焦虑

Anxious exam candidate’s problem is the run up, not the main event

焦虑考生的问题是在准备阶段，而不是临场阶段

 

1 EXAMS ARE nerve-racking, especially for those already of an anxious disposition. The silence of the hall; the ticking of the clock; the beady eye of the invigilator; the smug expression of the person sitting at the neighbouring desk who has finished 15 minutes early. It therefore seems hardly surprising that those who worry about taking tests do systematically worse than those who do not. What is, perhaps, surprising, according to research published recently in Psychological Science by Maria Theobald at the Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education and her colleagues, is that it is not the pressure of the exam hall which causes the problem. It is the pressure of revision.

 人紧张的时候，特别是对于那些已经有焦虑情绪的人来说。大厅里的寂静；时钟的滴答声；监考老师机警的眼神；邻桌的考生提前15分钟完成考试时的得意表情。那些担心考试的人比不担心的表现得更差，这种现象似乎并不让人惊讶。令人惊讶的是，根据莱布尼兹教育研究和信息研究所的玛丽亚-西奥博尔德及其同事最近发表在《心理科学》上的研究，导致这一问题的不是临场的压力，而是复习的压力。

 

2 Dr Theobald theorised that if anxiety was truly interfering with a student’s ability to transfer known information from brain to paper via pen, then those with high levels of it would perform worse in a real exam, when it actually mattered, than in either a mock beforehand or during online practice sessions. Moreover, she expected this performance-drop to correlate with levels of self-reported exam nerves.

Theald博士推断，如果焦虑真的干扰了学生通过笔将已知信息从大脑转移到纸上的能力，那么那些焦虑程度高的学生在真正的考试中，真正重要的时候，会比事先的模拟考试或在线课程中的表现更差。此外，她预计这种成绩下降与自我报告的考试紧张程度相关。

 

3 She therefore worked with 309 German medical students who were preparing for their final state exam, the most important that they take. This test consists of 230 questions split into three five-hour sessions over three days.

 

因此，她与309名德国医科学生一起工作，这些学生正在准备最后的国家考试，这是他们参加的最重要的考试。这个考试由230个问题组成，在三天内分成三个五小时的考试。

 

4 During the 100 days before the actual papers, all her volunteers used a digital-learning platform which presented them with old exam questions and logged their performance. They also sat a mock examination, clearly presented to them as such, 40 days before the real thing. To assess their levels of anxiety, they were asked, every day for 40 days in the run up to the real exam and also on the day of that exam, to respond on a five-point scale to statements like, “I feel tense and nervous”. On the day of the mock they were similarly asked to rate statements like, “I worry whether I have studied enough”.

 

在大考前的100天里，所有志愿者都使用了一个数字学习平台，该平台向他们提供了先前的考试题目并记录了他们的表现。在大考前40天，他们还参加了一次模拟考试。为了评估他们的焦虑程度，在大考前的40天里，他们每天都被要求对五点诸如 "我感到紧张 "之类的陈述做出回应。在模拟考试当天，他们同样被要求对诸如 "我担心我是否学得足够 "这样的陈述进行打分。

 

5 What Dr Theobald found was not what she expected. Anxiety on the day of the test did not predict exam performance at all. What did predict it was the level of knowledge a student displayed in the mock exam and the earlier digital-learning activities. Those who performed well in these also did well in the real thing, regardless of how anxious they were on the day.

 

西奥博德博士发现的情况与她的预期不同。考试当天的焦虑完全不能预测考试成绩。能够预测考试成绩的是学生在模拟考试和早期数字学习活动中表现出来的知识水平。那些在这些活动中表现良好的学生在真正的考试中也表现良好，不管他们在考试当天有多焦虑。

 

6 What actually hampered students, it turned out, were high levels of anxiety during the weeks before the exam took place. The greater a student’s anxiety in the days before the exam, the lower his or her knowledge-gain was during that period, leaving that student with less material to regurgitate during the exam itself.

 

事实证明，真正阻碍学生考试表现的是考试前几周的高度焦虑。学生在考试前几天的焦虑程度越高，他或她在此期间的知识收获就越少，从而使该学生在考试期间可以照搬的材料也就更少。

 

7 And this, paradoxically, is a positive discovery, for it suggests a change of approach to revision by the anxious might help improve their results. Dr Theobald notes that test-anxiety is at its worst when students have low expectations of success and simultaneously know that passing the exam is exceedingly important. To reduce this anxiety, she proposes a two-fold strategy for students to consider as they revise. First, they can raise their belief in their own abilities by reminding themselves of just how much they know. Second, they can diminish the significance of the test by reminding themselves that, while it is important, it is not a life or death situation. It really isn’t. Really…

 

矛盾的是，这是一个积极的发现，因为它表明焦虑的人改变复习方法可能有助于提高他们的成绩。Theobald博士指出，当学生对成功的期望值较低，同时又知道通过考试是极其重要的时候，考试焦虑是最严重的。为了减少这种焦虑，她提出了一个两方面的策略，供学生在复习时考虑。首先，他们可以通过提醒自己知道多少东西来提高对自己能力的信心。第二，他们可以通过提醒自己，虽然考试很重要，但它不是一个生死攸关的情况，来降低考试的意义。它真的不是。真的..