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Sitting for exams has been the most stressful challenges to many students in Hong Kong. A survey conducted by the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups last month has found that the major causes of stress in exams were the aspirations arising from parents and youngsters themselves.
Of the total 534 respondents, some 65 students or 12.5 per cent agreed that the results in exams would represent a person's success or failure. One in every ten admitted that they had tried to cheat in exams.
Entitled "Student's views on examinations", the telephone poll revealed that nearly 40 per cent of the respondent spent more than six hours on studying per day during the exam period. In order to deal with the stress in exams, most of the respondents would listen to music and watch TV programmes. Male students are prone to taking exercise while more females are fond of listening to music.
According to the survey, more than 15 per cent said that they had been experienced sleeplessness during the exam period and most of them were fourth or higher formers.
When asked in what ways they prepared for the exams, most of the lower form students said they would study by themselves, set up a study group with classmates or revise past exam papers. For many higher formers, they would prefer joining tutorial groups and trying to guess exam questions.
Around 45 per cent of the respondents thought that exams were the best way to assess students' performance in secondary school. It has, however, also shown that almost 40 per cent considered taking test and quiz, or doing projects as the most effective way in evaluating student's academic progress.
Senior Research Officer of the Federation, Jacky Pang Kin-fu concerned about students who put too much emphasis on exam results and were not able to cope with the stress properly. "There are many channels to help youngsters handle stress and problems and they should make use of the services," Mr. Pang said. He also appealed to parents to spend more time communicating with their children and to offer appropriate counselling when they were under stress or encountered difficulties.
Youth Opinion Polls No. 43
