Let me just ask you some questions and you would be answering to no
one but yourself. If you are a parent or a teacher, you should ask these
questions to your child/students so as to know if he/she is really suffering
from Mathematical Anxiety.
Questions:
1.
Do you fumble even at the simplest
question in the examination?
2.
Do you start feeling as if you don’t know
anything as soon as you see the question paper?
3.
Do you crave to be confident?
4.
Do you find it difficult to believe that
you have got the right answer?
5.
Do you calculate a sum and then everytime
calculate it again to check if you did it the right way?
What is Mathematical Anxiety?
Simply put, it is
the lack of confidence. We really don’t need to know the psychological nitty
gritty on this subject. Mathematical Anxiety can be defined as the feeling of
tension and stress which inhibits or interferes with the ability to calculate,
comprehend, understand and solve mathematical entities. Sometimes student tends
to go BLANK.
What are the reasons for Mathematical Anxiety?
There can be many
of them. Fear of failure, fear of public embarrassment, fear of being punished,
weak concepts and some bad experience with maths exam. Sometimes there is no
particular reason behind that.
If I ask you - “Why
is one afraid to speak on stage?” or “Why one fears darkness?”. No
precise reason. MA can be just like that.
How to overcome Mathematical Anxiety?
To overcome MA,
one needs to score well in Maths and to score well in Maths, one has to
overcome MA. It is vice versa. It sounds difficult. But it is not that
difficult to overcome MA. This calls for a tenacious attitude.
Everything stems
in the feeling.
“Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.-Henry Ford
So first thing :
Believe that you can do it
50% of problem is
over once you start believing that you can do. Rest 25% will be over when you
do it once. Last 25% demands bit of hard work that is worth doing. After you
finish a chapter or a sum, you should have positive feeling - “I know it!”.
Second thing:
Do lots of timed practice test before you appear for test
If you score well
in practice test, you will definitely see that you won’t be afraid of Maths as
you were. With each good performance, your performance will shoot up
exponentially. So when you will appear for the paper, it would be an usual
activity.
