Test Anxiety: A Descriptive Study of the Phenomenon

The present thesis is a descriptive research that examines the effect of test anxiety on student performances using existing data available in different written sources and inventories. I will highlight (1) the importance of learner characteristics and students' learning strategies, which both influence the outcomes of the learning process that have an important effect on test anxiety, and (2) that teachers play an important role in helping students overcome emotional problems that can appear during tests. I will also demonstrate that anxiety has enormous influence on the learning-testing cycle in second language teaching, giving some ideas and procedures that can help students to manage their anxiety problems through improving their study skills and the use of test-taking strategies.