The

Relationship of
Study Behavior
with Test
Anxiety of High
school Physics
Students

Introduction
Effective method of learning is one of the basis of determining students
success. It helps students become responsible in doing school learning
process. However, students learning process maybe influenced their
perceptions and apprehensions of the subject content. This is caused by
expectations which usually start during instruction and pre-instruction
preparation especially during test taking.
Exposing students to different kinds of evaluative measures is one way to
determine ho far students have gone on their learning activities. Thus,
stuents who are well prepared consider such evaluation a challenge to their
learning capability and develop willingness towards the subject. On the
contrary, students who have feelings of uneasiness will tend to consider it
as threatening to their learning process.

 Students feeling of uneasiness in learning the subject is normal,

but can be developed to worries and fears which will result to
anxiety. Students who in part have this kind of feeling, when
exposed to test will have this kind of feeling, when exposed to
test will have an unpleasant experience. This experience if
cannot be controlled will lead to anxiety which is one of the
common problem of many students.

 Similarly, test anxiety disables students ability in test taking because they
cant concentrate and perform well during examination. Students often do not
believe in their own abilities and think that their future depends on their test
scores. They would even blame test anxiety for the poor performance on
exams because the more they fail on test, the worse the test anxiety
becomes.
Test anxiety is create by expectations or thoughts about what is likely to
happen during test taking. Student with test anxiety do poorly on an exam
even though he or she may know the material very well. They even display
slower time on attention-measuring task than low anxious one
( Sullivan,2002)

 This is common belief that student with test anxiety is created by inappropriate
study behavior of the subject content. Some would avoid studying after which a
day or two before the test, they start to worry that they have not studied
enough others would have problems in planning and organizing their time of
study because they are affected by excessive television watching and pressures
of personal problems(Kuhn,2008). Likewise, students with good study behavior
do not have problems with encoding and organizing the material to be learned
because they wisely follow the schedule of their study time.
Appropriate study behavior must be practiced inorder to improve by applying
effective strategies that provide opportunity to approach learning tasks
systematically and independently (Kizlik, 2007). This will make students realixe
that doing good practice is important for success in school. It is not enough for
students to simply think about studying, but actually do it and in the process
of doing it , they do to get better. Knowing how to study effectively fosters
feelings of competence, develops positive attitudes, helps students control how
well they do in school and in life. (Harvey,2008)

 Good study behaviors are important for success in school because

this serves as groundwork for achievement. Student who receives
good numerical record is an evidence of having effective method
of studying. Students who have poor method of studying will most
likely experience frustrations and waste of time, and are inclined
to develop anxiety towards rests( Salado,2008).
Students test anxiety and corresponding low level of academic
success is attributed to insufficient and inappropriate study
behavior towards examination. Test anxiety results when students
have poor study habits, inadequate organizational skills , and
ineffective time management (Speided,2009)
Today thousands of students suffer test anxiety. Their test scores
rarely reflect what they have learned relative to the content. One
evidence is the steady decline in standardized test scores in
almost secondary school students. According to report given by

 With poor performance of the students in standardized test, more and more pressure is being applied
to the national school system to document success in all secondary schools. Several factors had been
observed and identified; first, giving too much of emphasis on the review in order to increase the
performance of students on the NCAE thus creating anxiety among students; second, lack of emphasis
on the development of students critical thinking skills since majority of the teachers have focused on
concepts and not on the process just to satisfy the needs of the existing curriculum, and third, students
low comprehension on English instruction and less mathematical techniques. Similarly, the poor quality
of students learning has been observed in many usual teacher made tests like the daily quizzes, long
exams and periodical exams. This implies that students find difficulty in understanding and applying
the concepts due to poor study behavior which may lead to overpowering fear or anxiety. Students
scores received in particular subjects reflect what and how they do the process of
studying(Wikipedia,2009),and that the low performance of test-anxious students is stemming from their
deficient knowledge of the school material and their awareness that they are not well prepared for the
test (Lufi,2004).
Low achievement in the field of science and technology is also marked by inactive participation of
students during the science fair activities particularly in conducting science investigatory project, both
school and division level. Most students were not given proper encouragement by their science
teachers to motivate their willingness to participate in the activities thus creating withdrawal in their
interests toward science.

 With the observed difficulties of students in easing their feeling of anxiety towards
test, it is necessary that the value of appropriate study behavior must be
incalculated to the students. It is from this context that the researcher is
encouraged to determine if such relationships exists between test anxiety and study
behavior of high school physics students particularly in the division of South
Cotabato.