Student's Anxiety.docx

A midtest-assignment of Methods of TEFL By: Prof. Dr. Muhammad Amin Rasyid, M.A.

MINIMIZING EFL STUDENT’S ANXIETY IN LEARNING ENGLISH

CLASS A NURYANI 14B01049

GRADUATE PROGRAM STATE UNIVERSITY OF MAKASSAR 2015

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INTRODUCTION In Indonesia, English as a foreign language because it does not use in common place, it is only taught as a school subject and does not serve as a medium of instruction in school. Because it does not use every time, many obstructions are faced by students when they studied English overtime. One of causes is English in Indonesia is not use as daily activity even though someone should often produce a language if she want to speak it fluently. Many factors affect students’ success and failure in learning English. One of the factors is anxiety. Brown (2006: 152) states factors influence students’ achievement are self- esteem, willingness to communicate, risk taking, anxiety, empathy, and motivation. Anxiety is feeling nervous, worry when doing something related to learning and teaching process. MacIntyre and Gardner (1991: 110) state that anxiety has negative impact to success in learning a foreign language especially in oral language. When a student speaks with anxiety, she may contribute to poor oral performance. Usually, a student with anxiety is fear evaluated by her peers or fear of losing face. Many causes that contribute to anxiety of students, they are: teacher’s negative evaluation, peers’ negative judgments, lack of preparation, fear of making mistakes, classroom environment, and fear of being laughed at by other students. Learner characteristic has role in students’ anxiety. Usually students who low self confident usually cannot speak fluently in English class. In this situation, Teachers have important rule. When teaching and learning process, a teacher should modify her teaching method becomes

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interesting and makes condition of classroom comfortable so the students can minimize anxiety of students as minimize as possible. Furthermore, based on the explanation above, this paper will give explanation of how to decrease the students’ anxiety in the classroom in learning English. This paper will consist of several sub topics. They are the definition of anxiety, the type of anxiety, causes of students’ anxiety and strategies to cope the language anxiety in the classroom.

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DISCUSSION A. Definition of Anxiety These are several definitions of anxiety according to Scientifics: Spielberger (2010:5) defined anxiety as the subjective feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness, and worry associated with an arousal of the automatic nervous system. Besides that, Mussen et al (1974:9) defined Anxiety is not a pathological condition is itself but a necessary and normal physiological and mental preparation for danger. Anxiety is necessary for the survival of the individual under certain circumstances. Failure to apprehend danger and to prepare for it may have disastrous results. Another definition from Atkinson (1971: 26) anxiety is defined as a psychological construct that is described as a state of apprehension, a vague fear that is only indirectly associated with an object. According to McIntyre (2011:97) anxiety is the worry and negative emotional reaction aroused when learning a second language. And Gardner defined anxiety as a subjective feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness, and worry associated with an arousal of the automatic nervous system. Young (1990:167) defined foreign language anxiety as “worry and negative emotional reaction aroused when learning or using a second language” Different with definitions above, Bailey’s study (1983: 162) of competitiveness and anxiety in foreign language, facilitative anxiety was one of the keys to success. She found in herself analysis, however that while competitiveness sometimes hindered her progress; at the other times it motivated her to study harder. She explained the positive effects of competitiveness by mean of the construct of facilitative anxiety. 4

Based on the definitions above, the writer concludes that anxiety is worried feeling, nervousness of someone and gives negative impact to her performance. For some students, anxiety has positive impact. With anxiety, they are motivated to study harder than usual. B. Causes of students’ anxiety Many factors that causes of anxiety, researches of Horwitz and Cope (1986:2) have shown that there are a number of ways that learning a foreign language can cause anxiety for the language learner. The causes can be broken down into three main sources: learner characteristics, teacher characteristics, and classroom procedures. Learner characteristics that can cause foreign language anxiety include low self-esteem, competitiveness, self-perceived low level of ability, communication apprehension, and lack of group membership with peers, and beliefs about language learning. Student beliefs about language learning can also be associated with anxiety. Students can have unrealistic expectations as to how a person should perform in a foreign language classroom; when those expectations are not met it can lead to negative feelings about one’s intelligence and abilities. Young (1990: 3) listed the following role-related beliefs which have been shown to evoke feelings of anxiety: it is necessary for the teacher to be intimidating at times; the instructor is supposed to correct every single mistake made by the students; group or partner work is not appropriate because it can get out of control; the teacher should do most of the talking; and the instructor’s role is that of a drill sergeant. As far as teacher factors, a judgmental teaching attitude (and a harsh manner of teaching are linked to student fear in the classroom. Young (1990: 4) found the following characteristics of the teacher to be associated with anxiety: absence of teacher support, unsympathetic personalities, lack 5

of time for personal attention, favoritism, a sense that the class does not provide students with the tools necessary to match up with the teacher’s expectations, and the sense of being judged by the teacher or wanting to impress the teacher. Young (1990: 5) noted that teaching too much grammar or avoiding grammar altogether as well as using speaking activities that put the learner “on the spot” in front of peers without allowing prior preparation are also sources of anxiety for many students. Young (1990: 5) found that having a native speaker for a teacher can cause anxiety, as the teacher may lack the sensitivity of the learning process or the teacher may be hard to understand in English. A third source of foreign language anxiety is classroom procedures. Young (2013: 6) compiled a list of classroom activities which are perceived by students as producing anxiety: (1) Spontaneous role play in front of the class; (2) Speaking in front of the class; (3) Oral presentations or skits in front of the class; (4) Presenting a prepared dialogue in front of the class; and (5) Writing work on the board. Error correction also turned out to play an important role. Those being negatively evaluated by either the teacher or peers is often associated with anxiety. Young (1990:46) found the following classroom characteristics to be anxiety-producing: demands of oral production, feelings of being put on the spot, the pace of the class, and the element of being evaluated (i.e., fear of negative evaluation). Normazidah, Koo, & Hazita (2012); Trawiński (2005), also presented the factors that impact the EFL learners to have poor performance in English language learning as followings:

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 English is regarded as a difficult subject to learn.  Learners’ learning depends on the English teachers as authorities.  There is a lack of support to use English in the home environment and the community.  Learners have insufficient or lacking of exposure to the language as there is a limited opportunity to use English outside the classrooms  Students have a limitation of vocabulary proficiency as well as English reading materials are not always available.  Learners have an unwillingness and lack of motivation to learn English as they do not see the immediate need to use the language.  Lack of motivation for learning or the negative attitude towards the target language. Chang (2010), indicated that reasons cause students’ weakness for English language learning derived from learners’ laziness, lack of efficiency of the school, and insufficient of parents’ promotions. Moreover, according to Dembo (2004), specifies that time management is involved in students’ educational achievement; for instance, students with better timemanagement skills tend to have higher grade-point average (GPA) than students with poorer time-management skills. Alderman (2004), states to the students’ poor performance of language learning are affected from a lack of effort, lack of effective learning strategies, whereas a good language learner is a highly motivated students and a successful user of a large number of different strategies (Trawiński, 2005).So, teachers have to help them improve the motivational beliefs and language learning strategies in order to find ways that reach to their academic achievement. Therefore, to these key factors, all stakeholders should find ways to solve the problems for learners’ academic achievements.

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Other important causes of anxiety among the language learners are stated by MacIntyre and Gardner (1991) as follows: a. Pressure by parents and teachers to get good grades at school in English. b. Lack of confidence in their ability to learn English c. Fear of making mistakes and subsequent punishment or ostracism, i.e., fear of losing face for not being perfect. d. Conditioning in childhood to believe that English is an extremely difficult language to learn. e. Fear of foreigners and their behavior. Because of the importance of English on tests for advancement in education and in society, parents and teachers press students to not only attain their potential, but to actually produce results beyond their ability. MacIntyre and Gardner (1991:112) write: he anxious student may be characterized as an individual who perceives the L2 as uncomfortable experience, who withdraws from voluntary participation, who feels social pressures not to make mistakes and who is less willing to try uncertain or novel linguistic forms. Anxiety causes less practice and production in the language being learned, thus hindering the language learning process. It is obvious that overcoming anxiety can improve language learning. Both the language learner and the teacher can be instrumental in overcoming learner anxiety.

C. Types of anxiety Anxiety can be divided into three types: trait anxiety, state anxiety and situation-specific anxiety. Trait anxiety is the tendency of a person to be nervous or feel anxious irrespective of the situation he/ she is exposed to.

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Indeed, such anxiety is a part of a person’s character and hence is permanent and difficult, if not impossible, to get rid of. A person who is trait anxious is likely to feel anxious in a variety of situations. The second type of anxiety is referred to as state (situational) anxiety. As the name implies, this types of anxiety arises in the particular situation and hence is not permanent. It is nervousness or tension at a particular moment in response to some outside stimulus, it occurs because learners are exposed to a particular situation or event that is stressful of them. For example, there are some learners who feel anxious if they are called by the teacher to speak in the classroom. The good thing about this type of anxiety is that it diminishes over time as the learner’s get used to the new environment or feel comfortable with the teacher. As a result, although state anxiety can prevent a learner from showing his/her full potential, it is not as harmful as trait anxiety. Finally, the last of the three types, situationspecific anxiety is related to apprehension unique to specific situations and events. Language anxiety is a distinct complex of self perceptions, beliefs, feelings and behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986). Drawing upon the synthesis of previous research on foreign language anxiety, Gardner and MacIntyre (1993) describe the concept as the apprehension experienced when a specific situation requires the use of a second language in which the individual is not fully proficient. To sum up, language anxiety falls under the category of situation- specific anxiety. Foreign language anxiety has three varieties and it will be explained as follows: a) Communication apprehension occurs in cases where learners lack mature communication skills although they have mature ideas and

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thoughts. It refers to a fear of getting into real communication with others. b) Test anxiety, on the other hand, is an apprehension towards academic evaluation. It could be defined as a fear of failing in tests and

an

unpleasant

experience

held

either

consciously

or

unconsciously by learners in many situations. This type of anxiety concerns apprehension towards academic evaluation which is based on a fear of failure (Horwitz and Young, 1991). c) Fear of negative evaluation is observed when foreign language learners feel incapable of making the proper social impression and it is an apprehension towards evaluations by others and avoidance of evaluative situations. The research also aims to investigate the levels and sources of fear of negative evaluation on the part of EFL learners, and it focuses on the relationship between language anxiety and fear of negative evaluation among EFL learners.

D. Strategies to Cope the Language Anxiety Most studies on language anxiety concentrate on understanding the mechanism of anxiety in the process of language learning either in foreign language or second language settings (MacIntyre and Gardner, 1994) and many also focus on looking at the approaches used to help students reduce their language anxiety (Kondo & Ling, 2004). However, there are very few which are directed at identifying the strategies used by language learners to cope with their language anxiety in their FL or SL classes. This issue is one of the concerns to be investigated in this survey. A study conducted by Kondo and Ling (2004) investigating the strategies used by foreign language learners in coping with their language anxiety is the main theoretical basis for this survey. Kondo and Ling (2004) collected information from 209 (93 female and 116 male) learners studying 10

English at two universities in central Japan. All the respondents were requested to answer an open-ended questionnaire and asked to write down the specific strategies they used to deal with their foreign language anxiety. The study initially identified 373 specific strategies but reduced this to 70 due to “the elimination of duplicate ones (defined as nearly identical in wording)”. The specific strategies mentioned by the students were grouped under five categories of general strategies, namely: preparation, relaxation, positive thinking, peer seeking and resignation. The five categories will be explained as follows: 1) Preparation is the first category, it refers to attempts at controlling the impending threat by improving learning and study strategies (e.g. studying hard, trying to obtain good summaries of lecture notes). Use of these strategies would be expected to increase students’ subjectively estimated mastery of the subject matter, and hence reduce the anxiety associated with the language class. 2) Relaxation is the second category; it involves tactics that aim at reducing somatic anxiety symptoms. Typical items are ‘I take a deep breath’ and ‘I try to calm down’. 3) Positive Thinking is the third strategy set; it is characterized by its palliative function of suppressing problematic cognitive processes that underlie students’ anxiety (e.g. imagining oneself giving a great performance, trying to enjoy the tension). These strategies are intended to divert attention from the stressful situation to positive and pleasant cues, and bring relief to the anxious student. 4) Peer seeking is the fourth category; it is distinguished by students’ willingness to look for other students who seem to have trouble understanding the class and/or controlling their anxiety. For the anxious student, the realization that others are having the same

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problem may serve as a source of emotional regulation by social comparison. 5) Resignation is the final strategy set. This category is characterized by students’ reluctance to do anything to alleviate their language anxiety (e.g. giving up, sleeping in class). Students reporting examples of Resignation seem intent on minimizing the impact of anxiety by refusing to face the problem.

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CONCLUSION Anxiety is worried feeling, nervousness of someone and gives negative impact to her performance. For some students, anxiety has positive impact. With anxiety, they are motivated to study harder than usual. There are a number of ways that learning a foreign language can cause anxiety for the language learner. They are pressure by parents and teachers to get good grades at school in English, lack of confidence in their ability to learn English, fear of making mistakes and subsequent punishment or ostracism, i.e., fear of losing face for not being perfect, conditioning in childhood to believe that English is an extremely difficult language to learn, fear of foreigners and their behavior. Anxiety can be divided into three types: trait anxiety, state anxiety and situation-specific anxiety. Situation-specific anxiety also has three varieties; they are communication apprehension, text anxiety, and fear of the negative evaluation. There are five specific categories of strategies to cope the learners’ language anxiety. They are preparation, relaxation, positive thinking, peer seeking, and resignation.

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REFERENCES

Alderman, K. (2004). Motivation for Achievement: Possibilities for Teaching and Learning . Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Atkinson, J.W. (1971). Human anxiety-empirical generalizations. Washington, DC: Hemisphere Bailey, K. M., ( 1983 ). Competitiveness and Anxiety in Adult Second Language Learning : Looking at and through the Diary Studies. In H. W. Seliger & M. H. Long ( eds. ), Classroom Oriented Research in Second Language Acquisition. Rowley, MA : Newbury House, (in Von Worde, 2004 ). Brown, H. D. (2006). Principles of language learning and teaching (5th edition). White Plains, NY: Pearson. Chang, Y.-P. (2010). A Study of EFL college students’ self-handicapping and English performance. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2(2), 20062010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.272 Dembo, M. H. (2004). Motivation and Learning Strategies for College Success: A Self-Management Approach. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Horwitz, M.B., Horwitz, E.K. and Cope, J.A. (1986). Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety.The Modern Language Journal, 70 (2). Kondo, D. S. and Ling, Y. Y. (2004). Strategies For Coping With Language Anxiety: The Case Of Students Of English In Japan. ELT Journal, 58 (3). MacIntyre, P. D., & Gardner, R. C. (1991a). Language anxiety: Its relationship to other anxieties and to processing in native and second languages. Language Learning, 41. MacIntyre, P. D., & Gardner, R. C. (1991b). Investigating language class anxiety using the focused essay technique. The Modern Language Journal, 75. Mussen, P. Henry (2009) , Developmental psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Spielberger, C. D. (1976). The nature and measurement of anxiety. In C. D. Spielberger, & R. Diaz-Guerrero (Eds.), Cross-cultural anxiety: Vol.1 (p. 3-12). Washington, DC: Hemisphere. Trawiński, M. (2005). An Outline of Second Language Acquisition Theories. Wydawnictwo Naukowe Akademii Pedagogicznej. Young, D. J. (1990). An investigation of students’ perspectives on anxiety and speaking. Foreign Language Annals, 2.

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