Anxiety in the classroom

Many students become anxious just before a test and/or they get nervous when they have to give a prepared speech or presentation in front of their partners. Such temporary feelings of anxiety are instances of state anxiety. However, some students are anxious a good part of the time, even when the situation is not an evaluation, for that reason, we have to take into account some tips to achieve a good and relaxed atmosphere. 

We suggest some tips to prevent the anxiety:

• Educate and inform the students about anxiety
• Provide an open-communication classroom, where all the students should participate and all the ideas are good to learn
• Teach and discuss the positive strategies and techniques to be relaxed with the students
• Allow students opportunities to practice and apply useful strategies to get over the anxiety. For instance, allow students to use stress balls during class or listen to soothing music while taking exams. Using this strategies may reduce tension and anxiety in the classroom.
• Model positive ways to prevent and manage anxiety
• Provide an effective praise
• Teach students to focus their attention on a specific object

Finally, we suggest an interesting video about "learned helplessness", in which we can prove how students feel when some students in the class know how to do an activity  and they do not. In this video, the teacher gives different exams (one very difficult, and another one very easy). Then, s/he asks the students; who have done the first question, and the students with the difficult exam get surprised when they see that some students done it (without know that they are different questions). After that, the teacher gives the same exam to the whole class, and, even doing the easy one, some students do not know the answer. It is possible that this student group after this situation are frustated... What do you think? 

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