Breath Work: An underrated test-prep tip

By Kweku Bentum, MS

Do you find yourself often feeling frustrated with an exam or zoned out in the middle of the exam because you just want to get the exam “over with?”

Do you often feel like an exam has too many details that make you unmotivated to understand the question?

A student’s mindset toward an exam often leads to different achievement outcomes. Frustration can compromise pacing, working memory, and overall test-prep experience. Being mindful of your body and breathing will help you navigate an exam without getting frustrated. The goal of this strategy: give your best work/effort and thereby achieve a higher score.

Breathing: Students may practice box breathing before and during their exam to combat nerves. However, this can be taken a step further to aid with pacing when navigating test frustration. Some detail-oriented questions may affect the reading pace. For example: Take a multiple choice exam and imagine a scenario where five questions in a row are not text-heavy and suddenly the next question after the set of five questions has double the text and contains diagrams to interpret.

This is a sudden change of pace in the exam. If you feel like you are suddenly zoning out and getting frustrated while reading a detail-oriented question in these instances, do the following:

1. Take a deep breath in and another one out as if you are letting out a sigh of relief. (This technique will shift your pace from the previous questions and redirect your attention).
2. Re-read the question. Take note of whether you can identify what the question is asking. If nerves are distracting you, engage in the breathing exercise again. Studies indicate that “ slow breathing techniques enhance interactions between autonomic, cerebral, and psychological flexibility, linking parasympathetic and CNS activities related to both emotional control and well-being” (Zaccrao et.al). Taking a minute or two during the exam to engage in this breathing may help decrease the stress response. Subsequently, this pause can help bring more clarity to tackle the question.
3. If the answer is still unclear, eliminate answer choices, make an educated guess, mark the question, and return to the question once you have completed the remaining questions.

Overall, strategic breath work helps students focus on the questions and can show them how capable they are of answering challenging questions during an exam.

Source

Zaccaro A, Piarulli A, Laurino M, Garbella E, Menicucci D, Neri B, Gemignani A. How Breath-Control Can Change Your Life: A Systematic Review on Psycho-Physiological Correlates of Slow Breathing. Front Hum Neurosci. 2018 Sep 7;12:353. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2018.00353. PMID: 30245619; PMCID: PMC6137615.