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email from lawman test-taker Hi! I am taking a very important law enforcement test. There are tons of codes and rules to remember.What would you suggest for me? Future LawMan email response from dr. j. I would suggest, first and foremost, that you take any practice tests that may be available, taking them under as close as approximate conditions as possible (especially time length); and eat, sleep and exercise optimally in the two weeks before the test. If you are anxious about the test taking situation, my recording, test taking talented, too can help. You can look over the transcript of the recording if you like by simply emailing me a request. You can listen to an excerpt of the CD here. You should also expect to need to study a good deal. Studying has to be done. No amount of hypnosis, good sleep, good attitude, etc., will substitute for studying. The more stressed you are about the test situation, the more you might tend to want to not think about it. The more you want to avoid thinking about the test, the less you will tend to study and the more distracted you will be when studying. For Memorizing Short Questions with Short Answers: Flash Cards. I would also suggest that you study a lot using flash cards. (In case you don't remember flash cards, you put together as many of the questions as you can with one question on one side of a 3"x5" card and the answer on the other side. You can then look through the stack, dividing them up into two stacks -- one stack of the ones that you knew the right answer for and the other stack being the one's you didn't remember. Little by little you get all of them into the stack of the one's you know and then you start again with the entire stack. This is a really powerfully effective strategy that helps you work more on the one's you have the hardest time remembering. It may seem like 3rd grade stuff but it is the absolutely most effective way I have ever heard of or used to remember a lot of short question, short answer -type questions. Also, add in some faith in a higher power of some sort -- faith that if you are supposed to pass the test you will and if you are supposed to take the test over again, you will -- faith that you are not supposed to be perfect or all powerful and are supposed to be a soldier in the Big Picture, taking orders and liking them whether its easy to like things or not. Note that this is the final touch suggestion, not the primary suggestion. If you need just a tiny bit more help than all that, watch the movie, My Cousin Vinny. It may worry you a little but it should lighten you up even more. Even if you watched it a year or so ago, watch it again. If you want assurance about the ideas above, print this off and ask another psychologist that you know and respect. He or she may have one or two more ideas but he or she will affirm that the above will be good to do, including watching the movie. Good luck. Dr. Johnson |
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email from mom
Hi! I am looking into these tapes for my son. He is 12 yrs old and really struggles when it comes to math tests. He does well on his homework and daily work in class but then when it’s test time it’s like he can’t remember everything that he has learned and then stresses about it and then forgets even more. He had to take the Math TAKS test 3 times last year before he could pass it. I do not want him to have to go thru that again this year. Would this help him at all and if so, please tell me how. Thanks for your time. email response from dr. j. Hypnosis focuses the attention in a way that has been known to make people able to get a control over the deep, inner triggers for anxiety that we don't consciously have control over. You can tell yourself, for example, to not be afraid in a situation where you are in a room with a lion that has been staring in all sorts of movies where it interacts with children and adults -- but in spite of telling yourself there is nothing to worry about, you notice that something is making you very, very anxious. That's because we all have various "layers" of thinking going on. When a person gets nervous about failing a test, in spite of all sorts of people telling him he shouldn't be nervous, those deeper, inner layers of thinking -- where nervousness is basically controlled -- can remain unconvinced. Going into the test situation, the brain screams "red alert" and the fight-fright-flight mechanism that we all have triggers in less than a second. Once triggered, blood is re-allocated away from thinking areas of the brain and into areas where muscles are dealt with, awareness of little sounds and little sensations becomes intensified, the stomach shuts down, the muscles pump up and the last thing in the world you can do is think about what you might have on the test. Your entire body and brain are set to run or fist fight. Hypnosis, if it works -- and for some people it doesn't work -- allows suggestions about calming and being confident to sink into those areas of thinking that usually aren't accessible. You can read about the recording for kids with performance (test) anxiety here --> incredible performance, too. If your son has pretty good language skills, there is also another recording, test-taking talented, too, which is even more focused on the test situation but generally for kids 13 and up. The transcripts are available if you would like to see them. Just email me. Dr. Johnson mom asks for clarification On math tests most of the time there are no set questions that are going to be on it so there is not specific material to study. Without having something specific to study will this still help? dr. j responds Yes. The recordings I offer have nothing to do with specific questions. They have to do with not being on red alert -- not feeling anxious. When anxious, everything to do with the test situation seems like something that you want to run from. The recordings I offer deal with anxiousness about testing. They do not make knowledge appear from nowhere but they make the test situation seem less threatening so the brain works to access what it knows. Whether they will work for you son, it will take trying them to tell. By the way, on math tests, like other tests, there is always stuff to study. The study is not focused on answers but is focused on formulas and strategies. When studying spelling, the child has to study and memorize specific words. When studying math, the child studies and memorizes types of questions and ways of making or not making mistakes in figuring. If he tells you there is nothing to study, you should check that with the teacher. Lots of kids try to avoid studying when they have test anxiety. (Actually, test anxiety or not, a lot of kids try to avoid studying.) If the test is going to be on multiplication, for example, then doing lots of multiplication questions is how to study for the test. If the test is on fractions, then studying how to figure out fractions is the way to study. Even the national tests can be studied for. Everything can be studied for if you have an idea of what might be on the test. In math, specific answers are not studied -- specific tasks are studied (when to carry the one, what the bottom part of a fraction means and does to the upper part). Check with his teacher. I bet you can get some stuff for him to study. Also, if he is having troubles, the school is supposed to find a way to individualize his study and testing. It is a federal law in the US and most other countries have similar laws. It costs the school money to individualize things for every student, so sometimes they "forget" to work on that. As a mom, you should ask what the school is doing to help him. Dr. Johnson |
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