MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ------------ NGUYEN THI BICH PHUONG AN INVESTIGATION INTO ANXIETY AND ORAL PERFORMANCE OF SECOND-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS IN SPEAKING CLASSES AT HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES FIELD OF STUDY: THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING CODE: 60. THESIS IN EDUCATION SUPERVISOR: TRUONG BACH LE, Ph.D HUE, 2012 BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ HUẾ ------------ NGUYỄN THỊ BÍCH PHƯƠNG NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ SỰ LO LẮNG VÀ KỸ NĂNG THUYẾT TRÌNH Ở CÁC LỚP HỌC KỸ NĂNG NÓI TIẾNG ANH CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI, TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ HUẾ CHUYÊN NGÀNH: LÝ LUẬN VÀ PHƯƠNG PHÁP DẠY DẠY HỌC MÔN TIẾNG ANH MÃ SỐ: 60.10 LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ GIÁO DỤC HỌC NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC TS. TRƯƠNG BẠCH LÊ HUẾ, 2012 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby acknowledge that this study is mine. The data and findings discussed in the thesis are true, used with permission from associates and have not been published elsewhere.
Author Nguyen Thi Bich Phuong Acknowlegments First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Professor Truong Bach Le- my supervisor-who never hesitated to spend much of his valuable time to instruct me devotedly. Thanks to his enthusiastic help and invaluable suggestions, my research paper becomes better and more professional. I wish to express my appreciation to Ms. Quy Thu, Ms.
Thao Phuong, Ms. Khanh Tam for giving me the most favorable conditions to complete this graduation research paper. My warm thanks go to all my teachers and friends at the Master of Arts class who shared a lot of experience and daily events that enrich my life both professionally and personally. I own all the participating students a debt of gratitude for their enthusiasm and help in my fulfillment of my thesis.
Finally, I wish to extend my heartfelt thanks to my beloved family, my sweetheart, and my close friends for their considerate care and great support during time I was busy with this research project. TABLE OF CONTENTS Contents Pages SUB COVER PAGE STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS. 1 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. 4 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES.
6 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION. Background of the study. Aims of the study. Significance of the study.
Structure of the study. 11 CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW. Definitions of anxiety. Foreign language anxiety.
Types of anxiety. Construction of foreign language anxiety. Sources of language anxiety. Measurement of foreign language anxiety: Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS).
Foreign language anxiety and speaking skill. Foreign language anxiety and oral performance. Vietnamese learners at tertiary education. Related research in Vietnam.
23 1 CHAPTER THREE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. Subjects and Teaching context. Procedure of Data collection and analysis. 30 CHAPTER FOUR FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS.
Results from questionnaire. Results from interviews. Foreign language anxiety and speaking anxiety. Negative evaluation anxiety.
Results from oral performance scores. 55 CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION. Restatement of the study purposes. How anxious are second-year English majors when giving oral performance in speaking classes at HUCFL?.
What is the relationship between anxiety and oral performance of second-year English majors?. Contributions of the study. Implications of the study. Limitations of the study.
63 APPENDICES 3 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a Foreign Language FLA: Foreign Language Anxiety FLCAS: Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale HUCFL: Hue University College of Foreign Languages H1: High-anxious student No.1 H2: High-anxious student No.2 H3: High-anxious student No.3 H4: High-anxious student No.4 L1: Low-anxious student No.1 L2: Low-anxious student No.2 L3: Low-anxious student No.3 L4: Low-anxious student No.4 SPSS: Statistics Package for the Social Science 4 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 3.1: Distribution of Questionnaire Items Table 4.1: The reliability of the piloted questionnaire Table 4.2: The reliability of the questionnaire Table 4.3: The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) scores Table 4.4: Statistics of questionnaire item 1, item 9, item 24, and item 27 Table 4.5: Frequency of questionnaire item 14 Table 4.6: Frequency of questionnaire item 18 Table 4.7: Statistics of questionnaire item 2, item 23, and item 31 Table 4.8: Statistics of questionnaire item 8 and item 21 Table 4.9: Frequency of questionnaire item 8 Table 4.10: A comparison of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) and oral performance scores Table 4.11: Correlation between Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) and oral performance scores Figure 4.1: Frequency of questionnaire item 1 Figure 4.2: Frequency of questionnaire item 9 Figure 4.3: Frequency of questionnaire item 24 Figure 4.4: Frequency of questionnaire item 27 Figure 4.5: Frequency of questionnaire item 2 Figure 4.6: Frequency of questionnaire item 23 Figure 4.7: Frequency of questionnaire item 31 Figure 4.8: Frequency of questionnaire item 21 5 ABSTRACT Feelings of anxiety, apprehension, and nervousness are commonly expressed by second/foreign language learners in learning to speak a second/foreign language. These feelings are considered to exert a potentially negative and detrimental effect on communication in target language. Speaking in a foreign language class, especially in front of others, can be anxiety-causing task for the language learners. Therefore, it is important to consider how anxiety affects the foreign language learners.
Although there is a large body of research on anxiety and speaking, this research issue for Vietnamese learners of English is not much. This study has attempted to investigate how anxious the students are when they are speaking in front of others as well as the relationship may have between anxiety and oral presentation. The past researchers, considering it a complex and multifaceted psychological phenomenon, have suggested using a variety of perspectives and approaches to investigate the subject. This study used a combination of quantitative questionnaire and qualitative observations and stimulated recalls to investigate the issue.
The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS, Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986) was used to select four high anxiety and four low anxiety students from two second-year English major speaking classes at Hue University College of Foreign Languages (N=74). The eight students gave stimulated recalls after watching their videoed presentations. Two teachers graded each presentation. The findings suggest that, in general, second-year English majors experienced anxiety differently, both negatively and positively.
Additionally, the high anxious students showed more anxiety towards giving a presentation as well as more negative feelings to foreign language and speaking. In attempt to discover the relationship between anxiety and oral performance, the finding 6 reveals that the lower anxiety the students were about speaking English, the higher mark they received for their oral performance. For these reasons, it is highly necessary for foreign language teachers to be more aware of helping students make use of and reduce their anxiety as well as helping them improve their attitude towards language learning. 7 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.
Background of the study No one can deny the powerful role of English in all fields of humans’ life nowadays. English is regarded as the versatile access to huge human beings’ knowledge. Many scientific reports and books are written in English as Crystal (1997) claims, “85 percent of paper in biology and physics were written in English, followed by medical papers (73%), then mathematics (69%) and chemistry (67%)”. On the way to obtain such vast knowledge, people need to access books, computers, and more importantly and frequently, communicate with others.
In other words, English, as an international language, is the shortest and most effective means for the communication between people all over the world. In this connection, the need to develop communicative competence gains much more attention, particularly, from educators and researchers. Accordingly, productive skills such as speaking catch more attention in teaching and learning foreign language than they did in the past. However, developing the English speaking skill is still a great challenge for both teachers and learners as there are many factors that affect this language skill.
Among them is anxiety that is also the factor accompanying the pressure of teachers and learners in the process of acquiring a foreign language. How to teach and how to learn well in an anxious environment is a big question for all. In reality, if the teacher is under high pressure, stressed or anxious, the anxiety of the students can increase and vice versa. This tendency may lead to unsuccessful classes and turns into challenges for teachers and learners alike.
Consequently, research has been conducted to explore foreign language anxiety as well as the relationship between anxiety and foreign language learning. Now that anxiety is considered as a complicated and multifaceted construct, getting much more in-depth understanding about it is urgent. Anxiety affects the learners not only in the learning process but also in 8 performing that foreign language. Further, it is anxiety that has the impact on the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
However, among these skills, speaking proves to arouse most anxiety (Horwitz et al., 1986; Young, 1992; Woodrow, 2006; Liu, 2007). As mentioned above, speaking is a hard skill that needs the combination of many elements; for example, listening, grammar, vocabulary, etc. to produce the output. What is more, the anxiety could increase much more when the learners make oral performances, especially oral presentations.
The pressure when one stands in front of the crowd, presenting something rises as well. Indeed, Young (1991) found out that speaking in front of others, according to her participants, is one of the most anxiety-causing tasks. In addition, in her work, Phillips (2005) claimed that giving a presentation might increase anxiety more as possible weaknesses or mistakes. Another researcher, Liu (2007), again shares this view when she conducted a case study in China.
From her study, foreign language anxiety is stated to be more associated with public speaking. Therefore, from the ideas above, it can be asserted that foreign language anxiety really has an impact on learners’ oral presentations. Students at the tertiary level in general and at Hue University College of Foreign Languages in particular may suffer more from anxiety. Seeing that students in tertiary education are required to give many oral presentations to be assessed by the teachers, they tend to experience much more pressure than other learners do.
Oral presentations are compulsory in almost every semester. This seems to be more serious with those who lack interactional ability to communicate in English. Perhaps one of the reasons for this struggle is the fact that students from Asian countries, particularly Vietnam, tend to be better at reading and grammar but worse at listening and speaking. They lack active interaction, thus causing the limited ability in communicating in English (Nguyen, 2002).
When she was still a student, the researcher experienced anxiety when having oral presentations in front of the whole class. Despite the careful 9 preparation beforehand as well as a foundation of at least 6 years learning English (from secondary school to high school), it was the oral presentation that made the researcher highly anxious. Sweating, word disappearing, stammering, wrong pronouncing etc. are all the symptoms that the researcher herself suffered during university time.
Once standing in front of the crowd, even her classmates, she felt nothing in her mind. Unfortunately, observing her partners in class, she still found the similar phenomenon. From the mentioned reasons and perspectives above, the researcher decides to conduct a study on “Anxiety and oral performance of second-year English majors in speaking classes at Hue University College of Foreign Languages”. Second-year English majors are neither beginners nor proficient learners, which offers more opportunities for the researcher to identify their problems in terms of anxiety faced when they perform oral presentations.
That is the reason why the researcher makes a decision to choose the participants. This research is conducted in the context of Hue University College of Foreign Languages where there is a good reputation of teaching and learning of the Central part in particular and Vietnam in general.