A Page is More Than a Wellbeing Tool: How Writing Helps Relieve Exam Anxiety

BACK TO SCHOOL SERIES: Issue 5

We all know that journalling or keeping a diary is linked to better wellbeing. The act of writing down your daily worries and problems clears the mind, likely lowering stress and anxiety levels over time. But did you know that giving yourself space to write down worries immediately before an exam helps improve exam performance? Neither did we! What’s amazing is how effectively it works, in such a short space of time. Let’s take a closer look at what’s going on…

The Mental Pressure of Worry

Back in 2011, Gerardo Ramirez and Sian Beilock wanted to examine the idea that student anxiety puts pressure on working memory in an exam setting. Working memory is a limited resource, much needed to stay focussed and solve problems – exactly the sort of abilities that are vital during an exam. The researchers tested whether giving students 10 minutes immediately before an exam to write openly about their feelings and thoughts regarding that test could help reduce the pressure on working memory. The results were astounding.

In total, four studies were run. Two lab studies with college students completing unfamiliar arithmetic problems under high pressure; and two randomised classroom studies involving Year 10 biology exams, with 51 students in one cohort and 53 students in the other.

In the first laboratory study, the non-writing group’s maths accuracy fell by 12% after pressure was introduced, while the group that wrote about their exam-related thoughts improved by 5%. In the second lab study, writing about an unrelated, neutral event rather than their specific exam anxieties, the writing beforehand did not help. This shows us something important about the mechanism at play here – any benefits gained were linked specifically to writing about the exam worries.

In the school studies, the effect was most pronounced among pupils with higher habitual test anxiety. High-anxiety students who wrote about their exam-related thoughts before an exam scored roughly 6% higher than the control group. Lower-anxiety students showed little difference with the writing task. 

What the Ramirez and Beilock Study Shows

Ramirez and Beilock concluded that ten or so minutes of expressive writing about test worries before an exam helped high-anxiety students perform on a par with their peers. The writing didn’t improve subject knowledge or replace revision, what it did do was free up working memory from worry, helping keep focus and problem-solving for the exam itself. 

In a later study by Schroder et al. in 2017, it was found that expressive writing about worries in general reduced negative brain waves associated with worry in people who worried a lot. So much so, that Harvard Health went on to recommend 8-10 minutes of expressive writing about your specific worries around a task, before any task you have to concentrate on!

Writing to Relieve School and Exam Anxiety

Writing your worries out before an exam is a brief, low-cost pre-exam intervention that really could make all the difference to your results – especially if you’re normally highly anxious. More generally, especially in years where there’s a lot of ongoing pressure in both coursework and end-of-year exams, journalling could be just the ticket to help keep stress and anxiety from building to unmanageable levels, and it could help your focus when you are working. 

Journal with RHINO Stationery

If you’re after an award-winning place to put your thoughts, look no further than our A5 Flexiback Notebook. Filled with high-quality cream paper sourced from sustainable European forests, this soft-touch notebook has won The Stationers’ Company Warrant consecutively over the last number of years. This independent mark of excellence recognises high quality and original design as well as strong environmental credentials. There couldn’t be a better tool to get you started in journalling!

Find out more about the Flexiback Notebook and journalling, here.

See our full notebook range, here.

REFERENCES

1. Ramirez, G., & Beilock, S. L. (2011). Writing about testing worries boosts exam performance in the classroom. Science, 331(6014), 211–213. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1199427
2. Schroder, H. S., Moran, T. P., & Moser, J. S. (2018). The effect of expressive writing on the error-related negativity among individuals with chronic worry. Psychophysiology, 55(2), e12990. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.12990