How to help reduce students' anxiety in an oral exam?

The following assorted suggestions stem from standard procedure at my department, which has a long-lasting experience with oral exams, and positive experiences reported by fellow students suffering from anxiety.

• The exam begins with the student giving a brief elaboration of a topic of their choice (within the subject of the course). They can talk uninterrupted for a while, and then the exam gradually shifts to question-and-answer mode on this subtopic, probing whether the student actually understood what they are talking about. This has several advantages:

  • The student knows how the exam will begin and they can prepare the first few minutes. This avoids anxiety due to uncertainty.
  • The student is not dropped into interactive mode instantly, but gradually.
  • The student knows which topic will be examined first, they can prepare for this, which boosts confidence.
  • Not related to the question, it allows the examiner to estimate how well the student can structure the chosen topic (which usually goes hand in hand with understanding) and put it into the context of the course’s subject.

• Do not ask questions that require long and elaborate answers, but go step-by-step, guiding the student if necessary, but only if necessary (so they have room to shine). For example, do not ask:

  Please tell me about [central result of course].

  Instead ask a chain of questions, allowing the student to answer each of them, and adapt them depending on mistakes the student makes or similar. For example, the questions could be as follows:

  What does [central result of course] state?

  Why is it so important?

  Under which conditions does [central result] hold?

  Why is [some necessary condition] necessary?

  Why does [some sufficient condition] suffice for [central result]?

  In a typical case, these questions are raising in difficulty with the first questions being something that every serious candidate should be able to answer without much thinking. This allows the student to get some confidence and get tuned to the topic before the questions become more difficult. Also, this avoids the impression of time pressure and the student knowing that they have to get to that bit which they are not confident about, even if they can score by explaining a lot of basics before that.

• If you ask questions where the student shall apply their knowledge and which require some thinking time, do this after they succeeded with some simpler tasks and announce that this is a advanced task and that they have some time to think. This avoids fear of failure and gives an extra boost of confidence if they succeed.

• Give positive feedback whenever you can. This does not mean that you should be drowning the student in praise, but rather avoid fuelling their anxieties by forgetting to let them know that they are correct when they are.

• If the student makes a mistake in their elaborations, let the student finish first, assert what was correct and then remark or possibly ask about the mistake. For example, if the student is elaborating on some equation and made a sign flip, do not remark upon it right away, but let the student finish. Then praise what was correct and ask them to elaborate their reasoning for that sign again. This has the following advantages:

  • It doesn’t break the student’s flow by interrupting their elaborations and lowering their confidence due to the mistake.

  • It gives the student an opportunity to detect the mistake themselves, e.g., by detecting it due to a follow-up problem.

• Announce the examination mode beforehand as much as reasonable, to reduce any uncertainty due to an unknown situation as far as possible.

A few assorted suggestions that come to mind:

• Having a good, supportive relationship with the student prior to the exam will make a huge difference. If the student knows you as someone who will make an effort to listen and understand rather than make snap judgements, they will be encouraged to be more forthcoming.
• Try to hold the examination in a situation that is familiar to the student. E.g. it could be held in the same office where they have attended tutorials or office hours in the past.
• Related to this, a mock exam could be very helpful if it is feasible (though I realise with large numbers of students this could be impractical). Anything that makes the exam seem routine, rather than unusual, will be of benefit.
• Build plenty of slack into your timetable. There's nothing worse than waiting outside an exam room for ages for building up nerves.
• Start with an easy question. This allows the student to build their confidence and gets them talking.
• If you need to make notes during the exam on the student's performance, practice doing this while looking at your notebook as little as possible. It can be distracting for the student if the examiner rarely makes eye contact, and lots of scribbling draws their attention to the fact that they are under close scrutiny. It is very unsettling if the student gives an answer which is met with silence and lots of writing, they are bound to try and second-guess what the examiner is writing about them. Ideally, record the exam and mark it later, though again, this has disadvantages in terms of the time required.
• If you feel it is appropriate, remind the students that they don't have to answer right away. If you ask a tough question and the student looks panicked, it is worth explicitly stating "you can have a minute to think about this if you like".

Here is a method for extreme cases, that I actually witnessed being used.

At my school, there was one young lady who was absolutely one hundred percent incapable of answering any question in any verbal exam. She would just freeze, and there was nothing she could do about that. Since there was one oral examination that had to be taken as part of the final school exams, nobody had a clue how she was supposed to ever pass. (Apart from this quirk she was absolutely fine and doing quite well at school).

As her exam time approached, she sat outside the exam room waiting for the previous student to finish and to be called in. Some teacher sat down besides her and asked her if she had been preparing well, whether she had looked at this part of the subject, and that part, and they just talked about her preparation and what she had been learning for about 20 minutes. Then he asked her if she was worried about the oral exam, she said yes, very much so, and he told her that there was no need to worry, because she had just passed.

So one method to calm a student's anxiety: Don't tell them they are in an exam.