scholarly journals An Investigation Of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety And Its Relationship With Students Achievement

Author(s):  
Riffat-un-Nisa Awan ◽  
Musarrat Azher ◽  
Muhammad Nadeem Anwar ◽  
Anjum Naz

The present study examines anxiety in English undergraduate classes with regard to the type of situations that provoke anxiety during different stages of the learning process and the relationship of anxiety with learners’ achievement. Participants of the study include 149 undergraduates enrolled in second and sixth semester of different departments of University of Sargodha who are learning English as a foreign language. The questionnaire used in this study is the abbreviated form of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS). An inventory is also used to determine different situations that provoke anxiety. Finally, students’ GPA in English classes is taken to find its relationship with language anxiety. The results show that language anxiety and achievement are negatively related to each other. It is also found that female students are lessanxious in learning English as a foreign language than male students. ‘Speaking in front of others’ is rated as the biggest cause of anxiety followed by ‘worries about grammatical mistakes’, ‘pronunciation’ and ‘being unable to talk spontaneously’. It is suggested that the classroom environment should be encouraging and motivating. Moreover, teachers need to deal with anxiety-provoking situations carefully.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elsadig Mohamed Khalifa Gawi

The present study aims at investigating the effects of foreign language classroom anxiety on Saudi male students’ performance at Albaha University. This study is going to answer the question if the FLCA has an effects on Saudi students’ performance. The participants of the study were (n=50) students, who enrolled in applied linguistics courses, level 2 in the College of Science and Arts in Almandaq in the second term (2018). The study ran a questionnaire for testing anxiety levels to the participants of the study to collect data. It contained fifteen elements, with the variables divided into three segments they are communicative apprehension, test anxiety, and Fear of negative evaluation, respectively. It also used a descriptive and inferential methods to investigate whether the students feel EFL anxiety. The study findings revealed a slightly higher level of communicative apprehension (3.6), a moderate level of test anxiety (3.4), and the participants experience a low level related to fear of negative evaluation (3.3). The calculated mean of overall hypotheses is (3.4) which suggests that the students suffer a moderate level of foreign language Classroom Anxiety. These findings explored significant effects of foreign language anxiety on the Saudi male students’ performance at Albaha University due to these variables, respectively. Besides, the results of this paper provided teachers and decision-makers with some recommendations and pedagogical implications that will enable them to overcome the male students’ language anxiety in the classroom in the Saudi setting, which will also help in achieving better learning outcomes.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arab World English Journal ◽  
Yana Shanti Manipuspika

This present study probes the relationship between English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students’ language anxiety and their willingness to communicate. The research questions are threefold: a) What are the types of anxiety experienced by the students, b) What is the anxiety level of them, and c) What is the correlation between foreign language anxiety (FLA) and the willingness to communicate (WTC) of the students. Quantitative descriptive approach was employed and the data were collected from 98 participants in an English Department by making use of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) and Likert-type WTC Scale. Pearson Correlation test was run to provide answers of the research questions. The results of this study indicated a strong positive correlation between learners’ foreign language classroom anxiety and their willingness to communicate. Fear of negative evaluation, test anxiety, and communication apprehension were the students’ types of anxiety. In addition, students had high level of anxiety, which in turn, made them difficult in dealing with language learning process and tend to have low desire to speak. Therefore, this study tries to highlight whether anxiety is a significant barrier to WTC, to determine the types and level of FLA, as well as to provide suggestions to help minimize the anxiety.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-98
Author(s):  
Chengchen Li ◽  
Jean-Marc Dewaele

Interest in the role of learners’ personality, emotions and the learning environment in foreign language (FL) learning has grown exponentially in the past decade. The introduction of personality psychology in the field of applied linguistics has led to the inclusion of a set of personality dimensions in research designs like resilience and grit, which have been shown to be significant predictors of FL achievement. The abrupt emergence of COVID-19 in 2020 forced universities around the world to move their courses online, which has been named Emergency Remote Teaching. The sudden change in FL learning environment offers a unique opportunity to researchers to investigate whether the relationships between learners’ personality and classroom emotions in traditional ‘in-person’ classes, and the predictors of those emotions, also exist in the new online environments. The present study examined the foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) of Chinese secondary students at different instruction levels and its links with learner-internal and external factors, namely general grit and the classroom environment (CE) of the online English classes. A total of 1,526 Chinese secondary students completed an online questionnaire. Pearson correlation analyses and regression analyses revealed that general grit and CE predicted FLCA either independently or jointly. The findings are discussed and interpreted in the light of existing research on person-environment interaction. We identify avenues for further research and propose a number of pedagogical implications for optimizing online FL teaching.


Author(s):  
Taha Talib Ali ◽  
Wong Fook Fei

Language anxiety is always seen as debilitative factor that deters learners from successfully learning a foreign language. Although many studies have been reported on foreign language learners’ anxieties, little research, if any, has been undertaken on Iraqi postgraduate EFL learners. The objective of the present study is threefold: a) to investigate the factors contributing to foreign language classroom anxiety among Iraqi postgraduate EFL students, b) to investigate the difference between both genders in the level of anxiety and c) to investigate the relationship between the level of anxiety and the academic achievement of the students based on GPA. The study employed a mixed mode approach using survey questionnaire (AFLAQ)and semi-structured interview. The study reported that three factors such as communication apprehension, negative evaluation and test anxiety are anxiety-arousing factors with test anxiety has the greatest contribution. The study also reported that females show more anxiety compared to males. It was also shown that there is a negative correlation between language anxiety and academic achievement which means that students with high level of FL anxiety tend to yield lower grades and vice-versa. Keywords: Arabic Foreign Language Anxiety Questionnaire (AFLAQ), Anxiety factors, Gender differences, Academic achievement


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Marc Dewaele ◽  
Taghreed M. Al-Saraj

The present study focuses on the link between psychological, sociobiographical and linguistic variables and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety of 348 Arabic learners of English (250 females, 98 males). Data were collected using the Arabic Foreign Language Anxiety Questionnaire (AFLAQ; Al-Saraj, 2011, 2014) and an Arabic version of the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire-Short Form (MPQ-SF; van der Zee, van Oudenhoven, Ponterotto & Fietzer, 2013). Multiple regression analyses revealed that self-perceived proficiency in oral English and frequency of use of English explained over a third of variance in FLCA: More proficient and frequent users felt less anxious. Two personality traits, Emotional Stability and Social Initiative explained a further fifth of variance in FLCA, with emotionally stable and more extraverted participants scoring lower on FLCA. Age was the final predictor of a small amount of variance, with older participants feeling less anxious. Degree of multilingualism, sex and education level had no effect on FLCA.


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