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.

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 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

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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 time-
management 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, situation-
specific 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

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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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