The Common Causes of High School Students' Anxiety in Taking National Examination and Common Strategies Used to Reduce It

Abstract

National examination is one tool of evaluation issued by the government to measure learning achievement of learners and measure education quality. Just before the national examination, students faced a difficult moment on mental and psychological called test anxiety. The major aim of this study was to investigate common causes of high school students' anxiety in taking national examination and strategies used to cope their test anxiety. Sarason's (1978) theories about Test Anxiety Scale for gauging the level of anxiety were employed to analyze the level of test anxiety experienced by the students. The research of this study was conducted in five senior high schools in Semarang Regency and the sample were 50 third grader students of senior high school. The participants were surveyed using an openended questionnaire. The result of the study showed that all participants had never faced the national examination on senior high school level before and they were anxious toward it. The most common causes for their anxiety were worrying about the national examination result and the fact that students had not mastered the entire subjects that would be examined yet. The result also showed effects of test anxiety in students' learning process. Furthermore, this study found out that two most common strategies used to overcome their anxiety were studying harder in preparing the material and praying more often.