Fear about Failure in Examination Essay Example
Fear about Failure in Examination Essay Example

Fear about Failure in Examination Essay Example

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  • Pages: 4 (880 words)
  • Published: August 27, 2016
  • Type: Essay
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Why do most of the students fear in failing the examination rather than the test itself? What could be the main reason behind this fear? Are there any forces that might have affected the students’ perception about failing? Let us view this issue in five psychological perspectives and determine why this feeling among students arises. Students, especially those in the adolescence stage suffer in many indescribable emotional stresses that could affect their day to day behaviour and social relationship to others, and thus, makes the individual nervous on the outcome every time they take examinations.

Why would a student feel conscious enough in his or her exam’s result? We very well know that most students do not want to fail in the exams, why could it be? In the

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functionalist perspective, because the exams are the outputs that will determine the grade then it could be that the grade is very important for the student that he or she is scared to have grades that would be either a low mark or a failing mark. In this context of idea, the exam serves or functions as the one giving the fear to the students because of its importance to the percentage of every student’s grade.

It will help the student to strive harder to do better in the next. If we look this issue in the structuralist perspective, whenever students take an exam, especially those difficult ones, there is always a feeling of having butterflies inside the stomach, they feel cold and throbbing. It could also be the place or atmosphere where the students take their examination or maybe for bein

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unprepared for it. Looking at the different factors which have affected the way of thinking the students do, we can see that these factors have triggered the feeling of being afraid in taking exams.

Another explanation about the fear of failure in examinations could be the kinds of fear behind the fear in failing, which are the following: fear of abandonment, fear of exposing mistakes, and the fear that everybody will become his or her critics. In the behaviourist perspective, we can come up with the reasons that students are afraid to fail because of what they would feel after, maybe because of the past experiences they had whenever they fail. These experiences are mostly due to observable external forces that affected the students’ way of behaving.

Some common experiences could be, that they are afraid that maybe their friends would criticize them again or maybe their parents will scold them again for not trying hard, and because of these reasons they tend to feel scared in taking the next tests because of certain consequences that would happen if they fail to meet the expectations of the people around them and even of themselves. Their confidence about themselves starts to go down and which makes them to not concentrate anymore to what is more important, the exam itself.

In the gestalt perspective, unlike in the structuralist way of thinking, we can view the fear about failing in the examination is just fearing to fail in exams, just the experience of failing in the exams. The student can also be afraid of the exam as a whole (types, topics included and most probable

the way would the exam turn out to be), it makes the student afraid in failing maybe because he or she already knows that there is a tendency that they will fail because they did not prepare for it.

Looking at it as a whole, it is the resulting grade or the outcome of every exam makes them worry. Shame could be the bottom of all fears behind a student’s fear of failing. On the other hand, psychoanalyst can view this issue as something due to the feeling of inferiority among others that a student does not want to have lower scores than others. The students feel devastated if their classmates can do better than them. The ego of a person triggers the individual to become competitive which results to the fear that they may not get the highest score or even just pass.

Sometimes, an individual with a superego feels that not being the highest in the class means failing the exam because they have this feeling of being superior to others, and they have to be always the best. Another reason is, if the individual belongs to a group where most gets high scores, like for example in a circle of friends, the individual strives hard so that his or her group will not see him or her as nothing, a lower kind or a good for nothing kind of student. In this kind of situation, the individual unconsciously feel that he or she should not fail at any instance and thus creates a fear inside them.

We all know that each one of us has fears, just like students their

goal is to have high grades that’s why they are worried at every instance that they cannot have good results in the exams because their grades depends on the resulting scores of their exams. Generally, most students are in the stage of emotional development, whereas, shames always exist whenever they commit mistake or whenever they make decisions in their life.

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