Profiling English Language Learning Anxiety among Selected Rural Area Secondary School Students in Malaysia: A Case Study (Published)
Malaysians’ English proficiency is on a decline, and this phenomenon is extensively debated on its possible causes. With this come renewed interest towards English language anxiety as it is an internal factor of the learners which sometimes can be overlooked. An investigation was conducted on rural area secondary school students in Selangor, where the schools are already impeded by facility and resource deprivations. A total of 311 non-examination students from three different schools in Kuala Selangor, one of the rural areas in the state, were administered a questionnaire which adopted a composite of Foreign language anxiety surveys, measuring their level of anxiety towards the English language classroom according to the four language skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing). Results indicated students in the rural area secondary schools experience moderate to high levels of anxiety inside the English language classroom, in tandem with Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope (1986) definition and classification of Foreign Language Anxiety along with other pioneering works in the field. The result demonstrated the commonality of language anxiety across different demographic settings. By gauging the level of anxiety among rural area secondary school learners, targeted interventions can be implemented in order to reduce its effect on the students who already face limitations on learning resource and infrastructure.
Citation: Faizah Idrus and Tuan Muhammad Hanif Tuan Ab Hamid (2021) Profiling English Language Learning Anxiety among Selected Rural Area Secondary School Students in Malaysia: A Case Study, International Journal of English Language Teaching, Vol.9, No.1, pp.1-20
Keywords: English Language anxiety, English as a second language, Rural Area, issues in second language learning, profile, second language learning
Finding the Nexus between Students’ Profiles and Attitude towards ESP: The Case of Vietnamese Medical Students Purposes (Published)
The aim of this research is to determine the relationship between students’ profile and their attitude in learning English as a foreign language. The respondents were 82 second year undergraduate students studying medicine at Thaibinh University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Vietnam. The research instrument is a Likert questionnaire including two parts: Bio Data and Attitude towards ESP. The study was basically a quantitative research utilizing the descriptive-correlational method and SPSS software to describe and investigate the relationship between students’ select profile variables and their attitude towards English for Specific Purposes (ESP). The findings from this study illustrated that there is a significant relationship between Thaibinh medical students’ attitude towards ESP and their mothers’ education, number of years of studying English, grades in EGP (English for General Purposes) and ESP and native language. Findings also revealed that the profile variables not related to the students’ attitude towards ESP are fathers’ educational attainment and sex.
Keywords: ESP, Medical Student, Relationship, attitude, profile