There’s a way to improve students’ test scores and it only takes 10 minutes, according to a study released in the journal Science and reported on by the Chicago Tribune.
University of Chicago scientists found that college freshman who wrote down their worries about taking a final exam just before the exam began performed better on the test than those who did not. The half of the class that expressed their test-taking emotions scored an average B-plus, while the half that wrote about an unrelated topic scored an average B-minus, according to the Tribune.
In particular, the 10-minute writing activity improved performance for students with test anxiety, states the study’s abstract.
“The idea is to clear the working memory—sort of a mental scratch pad in the brain—of worries that interfere with the cognitive resources needed for the task at hand,” reports the Tribune.
—by Caroline Cournoyer