A study of Taiwanese 7th grader’ foreign language anxiety, beliefs about language learning and its relationship with their English achievement

NA2C0009 Luke

Literature ReviewForeign language anxiety• State anxiety, trait anxiety, facilitating anxiety, debilitating

anxiety, situation specific anxiety and foreign language classroom anxiety.

• State anxiety is temporary and it swing over time; it takes place at a particular moment.

• Trait anxiety is durable predisposition. People with high level trait anxiety are usually nervous and lack of emotion perseverance.

Literature Review

Foreign language anxiety• Facilitating anxiety is the anxiety that motivate the learner

to cope with the new tasks.• Debilitating anxiety is the anxiety that negatively affects

the learner’s engagement in learning situation.• Horwitz and Cope defined foreign language anxiety as a

distinct complex of self-perception, beliefs and behaviors related to classroom language learning.

Literature ReviewThe influence of Anxiety• Horwitz and Cope mentioned that anxious students might

skip classes and refuse to complete homework.• Granschow proved that high levels of anxiety could

significantly influence second language acquisition negatively.

• Gregersen found learners who felt anxious might find their learning experience less enjoyable. This might lower their motivation.

Literature ReviewBeliefs about language learning• Chavez mentioned beliefs about language learning refer to

opinions that students hold about, for example, learning conditions or the utility of curricular practices, both those that they develop themselves as well as those imposed by the teacher, the methodology and pedagogical materials.

• Students’ beliefs about language learning required educators to understand the individual student types.

Literature ReviewRelationship between beliefs about language learning and anxiety• Horwitz and Cope found attitudes toward English learning

and the use of language learning strategies influenced students’ beliefs .

• Beliefs had significantly influence on their motivation, attitudes, motivation, strategy use, anxiety and English achievement.

Methodology

• The study utilized quantitative method to explore the participants’ foreign language anxiety level, beliefs about language learning and English learning achievement.

• Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (FLCAS) and Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory(BALLI).

• Background questions in order to obtain background information and students’ English scores of the first school-wide examination of semester.

Methodology

• FLCAS (33) was composed by three factors of language learning anxiety : students’ communication apprehension, students’ test anxiety and students’ fear of negative evaluation.

• BALLI(34) contains five factors : students’ foreign language aptitude, the difficulty of language learning, the nature of language learning, learning and communication strategies and motivation and expectation

Methodology• Translate both questionnaires from English to Chinese.• One college professor and two junior high school students

examined the wording; no changes were required.• Students’ English scores of the first school-wide

examination of semester contain listening, multiple choice, cloze, reading, vocabulary and answering questions.

Methodology• 220 students from one junior high school in Taipei county,

Taiwan in 7th grade. However, only 212 responses were valid.• 105 males and 107 females. 35.8% have learned English from

5-7 years and 22.17% more than 7 years.• Pilot study for Chinese version questionnaires were necessary,

though the reliability of them had been examined in many countries.

• 31students in grade 7 joined the pilot study and Cronbach’s Alpha of FLCAS was 0.89 and Crobach’s Alpha of the BALLI was 0.83. Both were the acceptable range of reliability.

Methodology• The investigator asked for permission from participants’

home-room teachers and home-room teachers and participants were willing to join.

• Participants received instructions on how to respond.• They had FLAS first and had BAFLLI two weeks later.• Cronbach’s Alpha of FLCAS was 0.93 and Crobach’s

Alpha of the BALLI was 0.79. Both were the acceptable range of reliability

Methodology

• SPSS was applied to analyze means and standard deviations of the data for learning anxiety and achievement.

• Pearson correlation was used to analyze the correlation between language anxiety and English achievement.