The studying process is unthinkable without exams. People tend to believe that exams encourage students to devote more time to studying. However, some people claim that the role of exams is too exaggerated.
From my point of view, exams do not motivate students to study harder due to several reasons. Firstly, many students have not ever experienced failing the exam, so they may overestimate their abilities. Secondly, pupils do not want to care about studies as they think they will manage to cheat on the exam. Finally, the perspective of exams is usually so far-away that you do not really realize it until you have one night left.
On the other hand, if a student tries to get the things into perspective realistically, exams can be a good stimulus for him. Thus, marking the weak points, wise time management and regularity are the things which will soon bear fruit. Moreover, there is a sort of competition between students with high GPA within one class or school. So, they aim to get good results just to be “not worse than the others”.
However, the phenomenon of wise competition spirit seems to be fading away as teenagers become more and more focused on them. School-leavers find it hard to make an effort when nobody pushes them towards.
To sum up, I would like to say that the role of exams in keeping students motivated is insufficient. I believe that only a personal motivation and a strong will help one to make progress.