The Impact of Testing upon the Students’ Behaviours

Abstract

Languge testing has become an inherent part of the society we live in. Language testing has really become a problematic in the field of education.Test anxiety as an affective variable has been shown to be negatively correlated with the performance in learning and testing.This dissertation focuses on first year science and technology students.The study is an attempt to study the impact of test anxiety on science and technology students at university.Subjects included 10 students from the faculty of science and techology. Two instruments were employed for this study : a questionnaire assessing students’ anxiety and an observation during the examination.The findings indicated that students experienced some degree of anxiety while there were sitting for the English exam.From thr results of the study , the sources and the amount of test anxiety were as follows respectively : second language deficits , fear of negative evaluation and failure.The results indicated that a considerable number of students were affected, at least at some degree, by test anxiety.From this respect, the following questions are raised : what causes test anxiety ? What can be done to allevate this problem ? The finding of thid empirical study, the review of the literature as well aw students experiences provide useful suggestions concerning the ways of allevating test anxiety.