Examining the Level of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety among ELT Undergraduate Students: A Quantitative Approach.

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume V, Issue I, January 2021 | ISSN 2454–6186

Examining the Level of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety among ELT Undergraduate Students: A Quantitative Approach.

John Peter Wappa^{1, 2} and Clement Pembi³

^1,2Department of English Language Education, College of Continuing Education,Adamawa State Polytechnic, Yola, Adamawa State, Nigeria.
³Department of English, Federal College of Education, Yola, Adamawa State, Nigeria.

Abstract
The study is aimed at investigating the nature of anxiety experienced by university ELT major undergraduate students; a representative number of 60 students from the ELT department at Cyprus University(pseudonym)in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) participated. The quantitative data for the study was collected using two universally used instruments, the foreign language classroom anxiety scale (FLCAS) and the foreign language reading anxiety scale (FLRAS). A quantitative approach was adopted for the study and the data obtained was statistically analysed using SPSS version 25. The general findings of the study indicate that the general foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) is slightly higher than the foreign language reading anxiety (FLRA) as experienced by the students. In addition, it shows no significant difference between ages in both FLCA and FLRA. Finally, it equally shows that there is no statistical difference between male and female in both FLCA and FLRA.

KEYWORDS:  Anxiety, foreign language, reading, ELT, FLCA, FLRA, Quantitative

1. Introduction

The English language in most cases is referred to as Foreign Language especially in countries other than the countries of origin, as it is becoming the world’s lingua franca (Coleman, 2006 in Santos, Cenoz & Gorter, 2018). Foreign language learning has been given a serious attention especially by European institutions because educational system attaches so much importance to foreign language. As a result of this, students world over are expected to be proficient in foreign language, as it is becoming a medium of instruction in most schools because most institutions design their curriculum as such (Bergstrӧm, Klatte, Steinbrink & Lachmanna, 2016; Santos, Cenoz & Gorter, 2018; Gurney, 2018; Tan & Nguyen, 2018). Such that now the issue of anxiety sets in, though before now, the nature of anxiety in foreign language classroom has long attracted the attention of scholars and have “been well documented” (Jin & Dewale, 2018; Yan & Horwitz, 2008). It is also worth noting that anxiety is one of the most frequent problems observed in foreign language learning (Yastibaş & Yastibaş, 2015).

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