AN INVESTIGATION INTO FACTORS CAUSING THE NON-ENGLISH- MAJOR FRESHMEN’S ANXIETY IN SPEAKING AT BROADCASTING COLLEGE I, PHU LY CITY, HA NAM PROVINCE AND SOME SOLUTIONS

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********* NGUYỄN THỊ THU HẰNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO FACTORS CAUSING THE NON-ENGLISH- MAJOR FRESHMEN’S ANXIETY IN SPEAKING AT BROADCASTING COLLEGE I, PHU LY CITY, HA NAM PROVINCE AND SOME SOLUTIONS (Tìm hiểu những yếu tố gây sự lo lắng khi học nói của sinh viên không chuyên tiếng Anh năm thứ nhất ở trường Cao đẳng Phát thanh - Truyền hình I, thành phố Phủ Lý, tỉnh Hà Nam và một số giải pháp khắc phục) M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Ha Noi, 2014 Hanoi, 2011 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********* NGUYỄN THỊ THU HẰNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO FACTORS CAUSING THE NON-ENGLISH- MAJOR FRESHMEN’S ANXIETY IN SPEAKING AT BROADCASTING COLLEGE I, PHU LY CITY, HA NAM PROVINCE AND SOME SOLUTIONS (Tìm hiểu những yếu tố gây sự lo lắng khi học nói của sinh viên không chuyên tiếng Anh năm thứ nhất ở trường Cao đẳng Phát thanh - Truyền hình I, thành phố Phủ Lý, tỉnh Hà Nam và một số giải pháp khắc phục) M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: TRẦN THỊ TUYẾT, PhD. Ha Noi, 2014 i DECLARATION I hereby declare that this thesis is entirely my own work. I have provided fully documented references to the work of others. The material in this thesis has not been submitted for assessment in any other formal course of study. Ha Nam, September 2014 Signature Nguyễn Thị Thu Hằng ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my most sincere thanks to my beloved supervisor, Dr. Tran Thi Tuyet, for her expert guidance, invaluable advice and critical feedback, and continual encouragement without which the thesis would not have been successful. Secondly, I would like to acknowledge my gratitude to all the lectures of the Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies of Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their useful lessons and assistance during my course from which I have benefited a lot for the accomplishment of this study. I also wish to send my special thanks to my students, especially the first year students in 10 classes of the college of Broadcasting I. Without their willingness to complete the questionnaires and participate in the interviews, this study could not have been conducted. Last but not least, I would like to express my special thanks to my beloved extended family for their love and understanding, their constant encouragement and immeasurable support in the completion of this thesis. iii ABSTRACT Anxiety is a common feeling experienced by foreign language learners, especially in learning to speak a foreign language. This study was conducted with the aim to investigate main causes of speaking anxiety experienced by the non-English-major freshmen at Broadcasting College I. The study involved 200 non-English-major students from 10 first-year classes at Broadcasting College I. Both quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews) methods were applied in the study. The findings showed that speaking anxiety did exist among the surveyed students. Besides, it was revealed that the factors related to teachers‟ beliefs and teacher-student interactions appeared not to be major reasons for speaking anxiety among the majority of the students. On the other hand, the students‟ communication apprehension, test anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, and negative self-perception of English ability were shown as highly anxiety-provoking factors for the non-English-major freshmen in speaking. Based on the findings and the students‟ suggestions in the interview, the researcher recommended some solutions for the students and teachers to reduce the students‟ speaking anxiety. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION…………… ……………………………… …… … i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT…….…………………………….……… …….ii ABSTRACT……………… ………………………………… … … iii TABLE OF CONTENTS … …………………………………… ……iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ……………………………… …… vi LIST OF TABLES…… … …………………………………… …… vi PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 1. Rationale 1 2. Aims of the study 2 3. Research questions 2 4. Scope of the study 2 5. Method of the study 3 6. Design of the study 3 PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT 5 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5 1.1. Definition of anxiety 5 1.2. Types of anxiety 6 1.3. Foreign language anxiety 6 1.4. Effects of anxiety on learning 7 1.5. Possible causes of learning anxiety 9 1.5.1. Communication apprehension (CA) 10 1.5.2. Test anxiety 11 1.5.4 Learner‟s negative self-perception of English ability 12 1.5.5. Teacher beliefs 13 1.5.6. Teacher-student interactions 13 2.1. Setting 15 v 2.2. Participants 15 2.3. Data collection 16 2.3.1. Instruments 16 2.3.1.1. Survey questionnaire 16 2.3.1.2. Semi-structured interview 17 2.3.2. Data collection procedure 17 2.4. Data analysis 18 CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS 19 3.1. Communication apprehension 19 3.2. Test anxiety 21 3.3. Fear of negative evaluation 22 3.4. Learner‟s negative self-perception of English ability 25 3.5. Teacher‟s beliefs about language teaching 27 3.6. Teacher-student interactions 29 4.1. Recommendations for the teachers 33 4.2. Recommendations for students 35 PART THREE: CONCLUSION 38 1. Summary of the study 38 2. Limitations of the study 39 3. Recommendation for further study 39 APPENDIX ……………………………………………………………….I vi LIST OF ABBRIVIATION CA: Communication apprehension LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Speaking anxiety associated with communication apprehension Table 2: Speaking anxiety associated with test anxiety Table 3: Speaking anxiety associated with fear of negative evaluation Table 4: Speaking anxiety associated with learner‟s negative self- perception of English ability Table 5: Speaking anxiety associated with teacher‟s beliefs about language teaching Table 6: Speaking anxiety associated with teacher-student interactions 1 PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Speaking is one of the four required skills in learning English, however a lot of students are not able to speak English, even though many of them have learned English for seven years. It is believed that there are affective or emotional factors influencing the foreign language learning process. Among various affective variables, such as attitude, anxiety, interest, motivation, inhibition, and self-esteem, “anxiety is quite possibly the affective factor that most pervasively obstructs the learning process” (Arnold & Brown, 1999, cited in Dornyei, 2005, p. 198). Anxiety is defined as a feeling of uneasy suspense (Krashen, 1985). As a teacher of English at Broadcasting college I, from my own observations and experiences, I have noticed that the feeling of anxiety, apprehension and nervousness are common phenomena expressed by my first-year students in speaking classes. Actually, many students keep silence in speaking classes and they are usually reluctant to take part in class activities. Some students may be very good at writing or reading English but they fail to speak English fluently and naturally. Some students state that they forget words when speaking in front of the class, and some claim that they do not often speak in class as they are afraid of being evaluated by the teachers and their friends. Some frankly admit that they feel stressful and anxious when speaking English. These negative emotional factors seem to be a barrier that prevents students from actively participating in speaking activities and accordingly, make the outcome of oral English speaking unsatisfactory. Anxiety has been a focus in research in foreign language learning since early 1970s with the ground-breaking research by the Canadian psychologists Gardner and Lambert. Since then, many researchers (Bailey, 1983; Horwitz, Horwitz & Cope, 1986; Krashen, 1985; Crookall and 2 Oxford, 1991; Aida, 1994; MacIntyre, 1995; MacIntyre & Gardener, 1989, 1991, 1994; etc) have consistently claimed that anxiety can impede foreign language production and achievement. Although a number of studies have been conducted to seek out the nature of foreign language anxiety, few have been done on anxiety experienced by Vietnamese learners in their English learning process, especially in speaking skill. Such situation has aroused my interest and inspired me to carry out a research on the topic: “An investigation into factors causing the non-English-major freshmen‟s anxiety in speaking at Broadcasting college I, Phu Ly city, Ha Nam province and some solutions.” 2. Aims of the study The major purpose of the research is to investigate factors or causes that make non-English-major freshmen at Broadcasting college I stressful and anxious in English speaking classroom, and suggest some possible techniques to reduce their English speaking anxiety. 3. Research questions To fulfill the above aims, the study is carried out with an attempt to answer the following questions: 1. What are the possible causes that make first-year non-English-major students at Broadcasting college I anxious in speaking English in class? 2. What are the possible solutions to reduce students‟ anxiety in speaking English? 4. Scope of the study FLA exits in the process of learning all four skills: Listening, speaking, reading and writing (Horwitz, Horwitz & Cope, 1986; Young, 1986; Aida, 1994; Cheng, Horwitz & Schallert, 1999; Cheng, 2002). However, only students‟ speaking anxiety is focused on in this research with its causes [...]... conducted in a location students feel at ease and at the time they suggested At the beginning of the interview, the students were explained clearly about the nature of the study The length of each interview was from 20 to 25 minutes 2.4 Data analysis The data obtained through the questionnaire and the interviews were organized and analyzed based on the six sources of anxiety discussed in the literature... precisely define since it arises from many sources Generally, it can have physical, emotional, and behavioral manifestations and these manifestations can differ with each individual 5 1.2 Types of anxiety According to MacIntyre and Gadner (1991b), anxiety in general can be experienced at three perspectives: trait anxiety, state anxiety, and situation specific anxiety The first perspective - trait anxiety, ... on a review of the literature about factors viewed as causing anxiety that affects speaking skills The questionnaire includes two parts Part one obtains some background information of the participants including their age, sex and the number of years they have been learning English Part two contains 18 items used to investigate the factors causing the students anxious in speaking classes Some items were... English speaking anxiety in classroom Part three: Conclusion This part contains an overview of the major findings, and the limitations and suggestions for further research 4 PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW The main purpose of this chapter is to review the literature on anxiety in general, and foreign language anxiety as well as anxiety in foreign language speaking in particular 1.1 Definition... questions in English Also, 72.5% admitted that they were embarrassed to volunteer answers in their speaking classes It is evident that these feelings of apprehension obstruct the students in participating in the English speaking activities In the interviews, five of the six students confirmed that they felt anxious or stressful in English speaking classes They also gave their manifestations of anxiety and. .. feelings, and behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process" (p.128) 1.4 Effects of anxiety on learning Most language researchers have focused on exploring the relationship between anxiety and language learning Although the results are 7 inconsistent, language anxiety presents the negative effects in most cases (Chan and Wu, 2004, p 291) Anxiety, ... the transcriptions carefully and then put the responses into categories with suitable headings like “communication apprehension”, “teacher‟s beliefs about language learning”, etc to explain the students‟ English speaking anxiety more thoroughly 18 CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS This chapter presents the results of the study The data were organized and analyzed based on the 6 sources of foreign language anxiety. .. 34.5% speaking lessons Table 1: Speaking anxiety associated with communication apprehension The data in table 6 shows that the first year students‟ anxiety does exist in speaking class: 69% of the participants agreed or strongly agreed that they felt more nervous in speaking English class than in other classes while only 15% of the participants suggested that they did not feel nervous Besides, their... foreign language anxiety are discussed thoroughly in this chapter Chapter 2: Methodology 3 This chapter addresses the setting, the participants, the instruments which are used to collect data, and data collection procedure Chapter 3: Data analysis The findings from the data collected and analyzed are presented and discussed in this chapter Chapter 4: Suggested solutions Some possible suggested solutions. .. speaking ability Sharing the same idea, Occhipinti (2009) concludes that students starting with a self-perceived low ability level in the foreign language class are perfect candidates for language anxiety Kitano (2001, p 550) argues that speaking skill is usually the first thing that learners compare with that of peers, teachers, and native speakers” In Kitano‟s (2001) study, the students said that . học nói của sinh viên không chuyên tiếng Anh năm thứ nhất ở trường Cao đẳng Phát thanh - Truyền hình I, thành phố Phủ Lý, tỉnh Hà Nam và một số giải pháp khắc phục) M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME. học nói của sinh viên không chuyên tiếng Anh năm thứ nhất ở trường Cao đẳng Phát thanh - Truyền hình I, thành phố Phủ Lý, tỉnh Hà Nam và một số giải pháp khắc phục) M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME. NON-ENGLISH- MAJOR FRESHMEN’S ANXIETY IN SPEAKING AT BROADCASTING COLLEGE I, PHU LY CITY, HA NAM PROVINCE AND SOME SOLUTIONS (Tìm hiểu những yếu tố gây sự lo lắng khi học nói của sinh viên không