Cambridge Tuition Singapore

How to handle examination stress

by John Naish

Psychologists have found a battery of scientifically based strategies that could help improve students’ scores if they are practiced in the final run-up to examinations. The bad news is that there is no substitute for revision, but the good news is that students can listen to their favourite type of music and have fun while doing the work.

Stay Healthy

Stress addicts beware: you’re putting yourself at risk of getting a nasty cold or another illness right in the middle of your exams. All-night study sessions fuelled by caffeine might seem a great way of achieving lots in a short time, but they wreck your sleep cycle, disrupt your eating patterns and trash your immune system.

Your body’s capability to fight infection takes a dive at exam time, so it needs all the help it can get. An Ohio State University study of blood tests of 87 secondary school students found that their levels of natural killer cells (the bloodstream’s security guards) were much lowered.

As well as sleeping and eating sensibly, you can de-stress by turning to friends and family. An Alabama University study published in Research in Nursing and Health found that students with high levels of social support at exam time had much healthier levels of immune cells in their blood.

BE A WISER REVISER

When to start: Now. We exist only in the eternal now. So now is a good time to start.

Test yourself: Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis report that testing yourself on what you’ve just learnt helps embed it in your brain. In the journal Psychological Science, the scientists describe how they took two groups of students and asked one to read a prose passage once, then test their knowledge of it up to three times. The other group was asked to re-read the passage up to three times. In an exam a week later, the self-testers recalled 61 per cent of the passage, compared with 40 per cent by the re-readers.

Use your imagination: While revising, try to remember the classroom scene when you were taught a topic. This engages other parts of the brain – your imagination and visual sense – which can come to your aid in the exam when you’re trying to recall facts. It also adds a bit of fun. You can even try emulating your teacher’s movements. It sounds mad, but students who mimic the gestures of teachers while learning maths learn new strategies more quickly than those who don’t, according to a Chicago University study of 49 students published in the Journal of Cognition and Development. The movement helps lock ideas into their brains.

Listen to music: University of California psychologists have found that listening to music can improve academic performance. In one study, university students scored higher marks after listening to a Mozart piano sonata than they did when they were tested after sitting in silence. Investigators believe that the complex structure and rhythms of classical music can also help by coordinating the parts of the brain that control rational and creative thought. But rock music may have a similar effect, say the researchers.

Summarise it: Don’t just keep ploughing through the same mountain of notes. It’s demoralizing. Dr Dawn Hamilton, the author of Passing Exams, recommends that you "chunk down" your work by reducing pages of reading to a few sentences. Hamilton also suggests that you link key ideas in your head with a rhyme or acronym.

What’s your optimum attention time? No two people are alike but, for starters, try the 45/15 rule: study for 45 minutes every hour and take 15 minutes off. Two to three hours is the maximum time that most people can study before they stop absorbing things. Break up periods of work with periods of relaxation, and reward yourself for your hard work with treats.

Allowing regular breaks also helps to fend off the No. 1 enemy of study, avoidance – such as cleaning your room or reading your e-mail. My old school friend Jeremy admits he used to spend hours timing how long he could hold his head under his reading lamp before the heat became unbearable. Instead of charring your scalp, burn off some of that stress in a gym session or by playing a sport – or simply taking a stress-busting walk. And lay off computer games: give your brain a chance to rest.

Night nerves: The night before an exam can be hard. Don’t start revising completely new areas – it will just make you panic. Instead, stick to key points and summaries. Actually, it’s far more important to go to bed at a decent hour and get some sleep: you will perform better. Keep nerves and insomnia at bay by reminding yourself that you know the material. Say "stop" to yourself at the onset of any negative thoughts.

When we feel threatened, our fightor-flight reflexes kick in and the body directs the blood to the primitive brain at the top of the spine. Survival instincts invade your head and rational thoughts take a dive. But ultimately, all that stress exists only in your mind. There are no physical threats such as wild animals in the exam room.

PSYCH YOURSELF UP

Top-class sports people face the same type of challenge with performance stress. Use their positive relaxation and focusing tactics and you can help to control your stress better.

One of the most common techniques top athletes use is to daydream about winning, walking up to the podium to get a medal; or in your case, sailing through the exams, then opening a letter to read your fantastic results. Mary Lou Retton, the American Olympic gold-medal-winning gymnast, says,"Visualise yourself achieving a goal. Picture the achievement in detail. It’s easier to be confident about something you’ve seen happening."

You can lock this deep into your brain by borrowing a self-hypnosis technique used in neurolinguistic programming. Every day, make a movie in your head of being an exam success. Do this just before you go to sleep or when you feel relaxed. Always start the movie with the final frames in mind. Use your five senses.

What do you see around you? What can you hear? What can you taste or smell? Imagine the school, the examination room, and how amazingly calm you are. Turn up the colours and the sound, make the picture bigger, and experience just how cool you are as you achieve those top-grade results. Focus on that feeling. Pinch your finger and thumb together whenever you feel it. Then when you head into the exam room, pinch your finger and thumb together. Remember the success you’ve imagined and you’re ready to go.

If you’re a high-scoring student who relies on working things out rather than just memorizing stuff, you’ve got more reason than anyone else to work on being calm in the exam room. Studies show that exam pressure is more likely to impair the performance of good students than average ones.

Researchers at Michigan State University and Miami University say that when the heat is on, good students can lose the strong short-term or working memory that enables them to process numbers and thoughts while focusing on a problem. Students with less powerful working memories may rely on other methods, such as looking for patterns (or guessing), and are less likely to fold under pressure.

EXAM-ROOM COOL

Use relaxation techniques. Before beginning the test, close your eyes and reflect. Breathe in slowly and exhale to relax the body and refocus any negative energy.

Adapted from Reader’s Digest

Maintaining a strong connection with your children during their teenage years

by Chan Li Jin

Awakened one night last year by strange crashing sounds, Nisha Kadir went to check on her 12-year-old son, Irfan. Not finding him in his room, she looked out of the window and was astounded to find him sitting precariously on a ledge atop their three-storey house in Singapore.

Although he didn't resist when she told him to come in, Nisha knew things were not right. Checking the ledge the next morning, Nisha found candy wrappers, empty Coke bottles and cookie crumbs – showing it had been a regular haunt for some time.

Withdrawn and silent for the past few months, Irfan's grades had been dipping despite extensive tuition classes.

"I don't know where I've gone wrong, but he has become a total stranger to me," says Nisha.

Like Nisha, many parents feel helpless when their teenager refuses to fall in line. Alternating between belligerence and sullen silence, the teen may frustrate all attempts at communication. Even so-called ''good'' teenagers may disengage from their parents and develop a separate life with their all-important friends. As such, many parents give up trying to stay close.

"That could have damaging results," says Mumbai psychiatrist Dayal Mirchandani." When the parent withdraws prematurely, the child withdraws even further, and the bond between them is weakened."

But isn't it natural and healthy for teens to pull away from their families? Apparently not. New research suggests that teenage children need their parents as much as younger children do, especially during the vulnerable 13-to-16 years. The national Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health, which has followed more than 12,000 American teenagers since 1994, concluded that being "connected" to family members protects teens against high-risk behaviours like unprotected sex and drug use.

And what exactly does "connected" mean? Not just the sense of being loved but also the physical availability of the parent during the child’s day – before or after school, at dinner or bedtime. Other documented benefits of a strong parent-teen connection: fewer weight-related concerns and eating disorders, a smoother transition to secondary school and fewer conflicts in the teen’s personal relationships. Teens who feel insecure in their connection to their parents have a higher risk of drug abuse, aggressive and delinquent behaviour – even suicide.

"There is a ´pull-push´ factor for parent-teen relations," says Carol Balhetchet, the director of the Youth Services at the Singapore Children’s Society. "Teens who grow up with family problems tend to push their parents out of their lives and gravitate towards the pull of their friends."

Called "peer orientation", according to Gordon Neufeld, a Canadian developmental psychologist, teens begin to take their behavioural cues from their peers, not from their parents.

"The problem is that these friends become their moral compass," explains Neufeld. "Peer-oriented teens don’t wish to live up to their parents’ values and don’t take parental rejection to heart." Typically, says Neufeld, "teens become more difficult to parent, harder to teach, more aggressive, less mature and emotionally hardened."

So how do you stay connected to a teen who seems to crave nothing but distance from you? Here are some strategies that parents and parenting experts have found to bring parents and teens closer together:

FIX THE RELATIONSHIP FIRST

Chan Kam Weng, the father of five in Johore Bahru, was livid when his telephone bill soared to $200 one month. He had found that his son, then 17, had been making long midnight telephone calls to a girlfriend.

"I work long hours and have to commute from one country to another to provide for the family. It bothers me to think that he thought nothing of the sacrifices I’ve made," he says.

Afraid that his lack of attention had led his son to mix with the wrong crowd, Chan sought advice from friends, who advised him to have a serious talk with his son. He also drew a chart of the monthly expenses, with the phone bills occupying the largest percentage, and pasted it on the kitchen wall. "He hadn’t realized his calls would cost so much. Once I did the sums with him, he started reducing his calls," Chan says.

"Our privileged children have a different idea of what basic needs are and have no inkling of their parents’ hardships," says Balhechet. "In the rush for a better life, many parents forget their children need their guidance and time."

LEARN TO COMPROMISE

When your teen takes your car out without your permission, it’s easy to fear the worst: driving today, illegal racing tomorrow, drunken driving the next day.

"You’ve got to remember the issue here is the driving, not the car," says Teoh Hsien-Jin, a consultant clinical psychologist and Head of School of Health and Natural Sciences at Sunway University College in Malaysia. The author of 29 books, including How to Talk to Teenagers, he had a client who complained that her 17-year-old didn’t talk to her any more because she wouldn’t let him use her car. "Saying ‘no’ only strengthens his desire to drive. Why not get him professional driving lessons so he knows the safety rules," says Teoh. Compromising helps you determine and tackle the real problem so it doesn’t get entangled with other emotional issues.

CHOOSE YOUR PLACE

Many teens resist the heart-to-heart talks touted as ideal by some psychologists. They’re more likely to talk, and listen, to you while you’re engaged in another activity, such as shopping or driving in the car. In such a context, revelations seem more casual and incidental, allowing the teen to save face.

The truth doesn’t always come in transparent packages, however. When you ask your son whether he’d like you to attend his football game and he answers,"Guess so. If you want," assume he really wants you to go.

MAINTAIN FAMILY VALUES

Family rituals such as eating dinner together shouldn’t end when the child reaches 13, says C.J. John, the head of the department of mental health at the Medical Trust Hospital in Kochi, India. "Rituals help in bonding and providing a sense of security," he says. "Teenagers don’t acknowledge this openly, but rituals tell them that you’re still very concerned about their well-being." When Reader’s Digest polled over 3000 teenagers in July 2005, many kids said they simply wanted to eat dinner with their parents.

A caveat: "Time spent with the family can be much more rewarding if it’s understood that arguing is not allowed," says psychiatrist Mirchandani. That means you’re not allowed to discuss his poor report card at the dinner table.

PUT YOURSELF IN YOUR TEEN’S SHOES

Parents often compare their own teenage lives with their children’s, forgetting that youngsters today are more stressed than they ever were. The preoccupation with examination results across Asia means that most teenagers go from school to one tutor after the other, leaving little time for socializing and relaxation. "Parents also place very high expectations on their kids," says Balhetchet. "Give them some breathing space. Sometimes that’s all it takes for them to start talking to you again."

FIND COMMON GROUND

When asked how she stays connected to her two teenage children aged 11 and 14, Nasha Abdullah, a travel agent from Kuala Lumpur says, "We never got disconnected in the first place. I always try to bond with them through a common interest."

Music served as a bridge with her children. "I brought them to the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert when we were holidaying in Sweden. They weren’t old enough to go on their own, and they thought it was cool that I would go with them."

SPEND TIME ALONE WITH YOUR TEEN

When psychologist Gordon Neufeld became worried about his 13-year-old daughter’s slavish imitation of her peers’ language and bearing, he booked a week-long vacation with her at a rented cottage. Predictably, Natasha balked at the plan, "but we gradually rediscovered the closeness we’d had when she was younger," Neufeld recalls. "When the week was over, we both agreed that it had been a great idea."

LOSE THE LECTURES

"Most teenagers think their parents are weird," says Teoh from Malaysia. "They get confused when their parents tell them to behave like responsible youngsters, yet treat them like little children by lecturing them all the time."

Lectures can cause your teen to disengage rather than connect with you. Instead of doing all the talking, put the thinking cap on your child’s head. For example, if your daughter brings home a poor report card, ask her how she plans to handle the situation. Keep it short and express your confidence in her abilities.

It took a long talk to help Nisha and her son unlock their horns. "I asked Irfan if there was something bothering him. He confessed that he hated school because a senior had been extorting money from him."

Nisha told the school principal, who disciplined the bully. "Irfan and I are closer now," says Nisha. "He saw that I was really concerned about him and was ready to listen to his problems."

Adapted from Reader’s Digest