Anxiety in English Language Learning Among Thai Students

This study aimed to investigate which of the English learning anxieties (communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation) is most experienced by EFL of the English major students of Universitas Klabat in year 2017/2018. The respondents of this study comprised of 207 English major students of Universitas Klabat, 47 males and 160 females. This study utilized descriptive-correlational research design. Mean and standard deviation were utilized for descriptive. Multiple comparison Sceffe was utilized to see the differences of English language anxiety among the respondents and independent t-test and Pearson correlation were utilized for correlation between the length of study and English language anxiety. The results showed that the English major students of Universitas Klabat highly experienced English language anxiety: communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation. The difference of variance ANOVA test showed there are significant differences in students’ English learning anxiety among different variables in communication apprehension and fear of negative evaluation, but no significant difference is shown in Test Anxiety. Pearson correlation showed there is a correlation between the length of study in campus and communication apprehension and has a negative low correlation, but there is no correlation between the length of study and both test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation.

The Impact of Language Status on Pharmacy Admissions: A Comparative Study of English Language Learners and Native English Speaking Students.

This qualitative study investigated four monolingual, English-only speaking Caucasian elementary music teachers and their reflections regarding instruction of English language learners (ELL). The purpose of this multiple case study was to investigate the teaching practice and curricular decisions of elementary music teachers who instruct Hispanic ELL students. The investigation was conducted during a nine-week period, and data collection included classroom observations, phenomenological interviewing, and teacher audio journals. None of the teachers had prior education or pre-service preparation in teaching music to ELL students. The major theoretical base from which the study was developed was the reflective teaching theory of Donald Schön (1983). The main research question was: "What are the participating teachers' reflections about their curricular and pedagogical decisions when teaching ELL students?" Following a description of the elementary music teachers' reflections on practice with ELL students, the study revealed that the majority of elementary music teachers had a lack of preparation and ELL music curriculum, and negative perceptions of the placement program for ESL students. Despite these factors, the teachers made attempts to include ELL students in all music activities. This study showed that while one teacher accommodated specifically for the ELL students' learning, three out of four teachers did not. This study also suggests that music is a subject by which strong interactions between peers, opportunity for language expansion, and other factors occur which have positive correspondence to recommended ELL instructional strategies. A cross-case analysis revealed that the life history and experience of the elementary music teachers had an influence on the teachers' awareness of ELL students. The analysis suggests a relationship between teacher awareness and accommodation. The study also recognized the need for further inquiry regarding ELL students and issues related to their school placement. This study has implications for music education research including suggestions for music teacher preparation in working with ELL students, ELL music resources and curriculum, and pre-service and in-service ELL music preparation.

Sheltered instruction (SI) is a teaching strategy that allows the school library media specialist to collaborate in the English-as-a-second language (ESL) program to help English language learner (ELL) students integrate second-language acquisition skills with content area instruction. By aligning ESL Standards for Pre-K-12 Students with Information Power standards, a powerful collaborative effort is formed between the school library media specialist and ESL teachers. These two United States standards for education allow ESL teachers to learn selection criteria and teaching strategies for using informational trade books with ELL students while providing an opportunity far the school library media specialist to learn how better to assist ELL students with acquiring information. Read-alouds, puppetry, book talks, storytelling, author studies, and listening centers are useful approaches for incorporating the various genres of informational books into sheltered instruction.

The current study investigated anxiety-provoking classroom sources among undergraduate engineering students at Mehran UET, Pakistan. In this study, the participants (female 105 male 116) participated. The data were collected via questionnaire FLCAS and semi-structured interviews. The objective of this study was to identify classroom sources of anxiety quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings of study suggested some main sources of anxiety among fresh engineering students: (1) test anxiety; (2) apprehension in communication; (3) fear of negative evaluation; (4) presentation in English; (5) English language instructor; (6) competitiveness in English language; (7) negative self-evaluation; (8) individual tasks in classroom; (9) fear of making errors in English classroom; (10) English language difficulties. The participants have self-reported the main sources of anxiety in English language learning. These sources also confirm previous research on anxiety-causing sources among foreign language learners.

Many school districts consider literacy and oral language as a top priority for pre-kindergarten students. In the district under study, pre-kindergarten English language learner (ELL) students are encouraged to attend a special summer school program to increase their oral language ability in English. This study compared three groups of children: ELL students attending summer school v. ELL students not attending summer school v. English speaking students not attending summer school. The students' primary reading inventory scores from the end of pre-kindergarten to the middle of kindergarten in the areas of reading, writing and oral language were compared. As expected, ELLs who attended summer school showed significant growth in oral language development from the beginning of summer school to the end of summer school. While it was hypothesized that ELL students attending summer school would show more improvement in oral language than other children over time, there was no significant difference between summer school and non-summer school children's scores by the middle of kindergarten.

This article explores educator perceptions of gifted and talented (GT) English language learning (ELL) students. Nine educators from two schools within a school district with high population of ELL students were interviewed in this qualitative study. Discussion focused on understanding teachers’ ideas regarding ELL gifted students. Three main themes emerged from interviews: educator perceptions, identification, and professional development. Implications from the study include the need for specific professional development to restructure thinking regarding ELL students and to inform educators on the myriad of ways giftedness may manifest itself.

Non-intellective factors are elements that do not involve cognition, such as biological, social and physiological, which could affect the student’s ability to learn the second language. While most researches focus on the factors relating to the intellectual ability of the learners, the attention to non-intellective correlates became limited. This paper determines the correlation between the non-intellective factors and the learners’ second language competencies. Descriptive-correlational and comparative methods of research were used. The study involved 385 Grade 12 student-respondents from the 27 selected public and private senior high schools. Significant results revealed that non-intellective factors such as language learning anxiety as to test anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, and communication apprehension are significantly related to the learners’ second language competencies; however, the learning environment does not significantly relate with the learners’ second language competencies. Meanwhile, the test of difference on the responses from the public and private school respondents revealed that the language learning anxiety in terms of fear of negative evaluation and communication apprehension were found significant while the language learning anxiety in terms of test anxiety as well as the learning environment as to teachers’ attitudes, instructional practices and school facilities were deemed not significant. The author concludes that language learning anxiety affects the learners’ second language competencies.

Education is considered to be a powerful method which aids to change the behaviour of the students based on their needs and expectation of the society. Student anxiety and attitude are considered an essential part of learning; consequently it becomes an important element of second language learning. The main purpose of this study is to investigate factors influencing students’ anxiety in language learning in private universities in Erbil. A quantitative research method was applied to measure students anxiety which consisted of fear of negative evaluation, communication apprehension and test anxiety. The researcher adopted and modified a survey from previous academic scholars and was able to gather necessary information. The researcher was able to gather 92 questionnaires being filled properly. Multiple regression analysis was applied to test each research hypotheses. The findings of this study revealed that students’ fear of negative anxiety had the higher level of anxiety towards learning language, on the other hand students test anxiety had lower value among other variables.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offer high quality, free courses to anyone with an Internet connection. However, these courses may be relatively inaccessible to the large global population of students who are English Language Learners (ELLs). Current efforts to understand student motivation in MOOCs do not take into account the specific needs of ELL students. Through interviews with 12 ELL online students, and a survey with 20,084 ELL respondents, we investigate ELL students’ motivations for taking online courses. We show that ELL students’ motivations are highly socialized strategies for achieving long-term goals of economic, social, and geographic mobility. Although research studies show that ELLs interact sparingly with other students in MOOCs, we present evidence that they have unmet needs for interaction, and discuss how student interaction systems in MOOCs can better address these needs. Finally, we show evidence that ELLs deliberately use English MOOCs to improve their language skills, even when the content is not language-related. This implies that meeting ELL students’ needs and access to MOOCs involves translating MOOCs to their local languages, but also providing language support in English-language MOOCs.

English language learners (ELLs) and their teachers, schools, and communities face increasingly high-stakes consequences due to test score gaps between ELLs and non-ELLs. It is essential that the field of educational assessment continue to investigate the meaning of these test score gaps. This article discusses the findings of an exploratory study of the response processes of grade 5 ELLs and non-ELLs on multiple-choice science test items from a high-stakes test. We found that the ELL students in our sample were more likely than the non-ELL students to answer incorrectly despite demonstrating knowledge of the science content targeted by the test items. Investigating the interview transcripts of ELL students who answered in this way revealed that ELL students’ interactions with specific linguistic features of test items often led to alternative interpretations of the items that resulted in incorrect answers. The implications of this work for the assessment of ELLs in science are discussed.

This study seeks to understand the information-to-knowledge experience of English Language Learner (ELL) students in a Guided Inquiry project undertaken by the librarian and subject teachers. As a pilot study, it provides an in-depth examination of two Korean 11th grade students in a biology class of a high school in New Jersey, U.S. During the project, data were collected through questionnaire, surveys, search journals, search sessions, observation, students’ papers, and interviews. The findings of this study will facilitate the understanding on the information seeking and knowledge construction process of ELL students so that school environments, including school libraries, can provide meaningful instructional and service interventions for them.

Objectives. The aim of the study is to examine the procrastination among international students in academic settings in Ukraine.
 Materials & Methods. The 41 participants were recruited from two national universities in Volyn oblast who came from African countries to obtain higher education in Ukraine. Procrastination Scale, Acculturative Stress Scale, Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale were applied in the research.
 Results. Evidence consistently suggests that there are no gender differences in procrastination, acculturating stress, and language anxiety. However, a weak negative correlation between procrastination and age of the participants was found (r=-0.26 p<0.05). It is possible to hypothesise that academic procrastination is less likely to occur in mature age, being replaced by the procrastination in other life domains. The findings of multiple regression suggest that acculturative stress and language anxiety taken together predict procrastination of the international students (R2 = 0.469, F (4, 37) = 2.741, p=0.015). However, amongst other predictors only fear of negative evaluation as a separate scale of language anxiety is an independent robust predictor of procrastination. One unanticipated finding was that accultuarion is not a significant moderator of the interaction between fear of negative evaluation and procrastination. Therefore, international students’ procrastination is predicted by rather social anxiety of being evaluated than cultural settings and language anxiety per se. This inference is in line with the evidence that test anxiety and communication apprehension are not independent significant predictors of procrastination.
 Conclusion. The current study showed that the main predictor of procrastination is linked to social anxiety which might be triggered by new cultural and academic settings and, therefore, transformed into procrastination. However, with a small sample size which represents only African students, caution must be applied, as the findings might not be extrapolated for the international students from other countries. Further studies, which take these limitations into account, will need to be undertaken.

Hi I like basketbol and I'm tall. I'm friendly with every one. I like to go to the mall a lot. I'm from Mexico but I think that is a great oportunity to learn two lenguages. I'm Proud of myself. I love animals expecialy cats. ... I'm pretty sure that I will be a good teacher when I grow up. And I think I'm pretty but I'm not sure about that. When I get mad is thanks to a boy. ... Oh and one more thing I'm so silly and not funny. -Rosa, 12-year-old English language learner in a sheltered English class hy my sprin brek wos borin cos i diren bon naten des ste sterin the wall cos i wos panish cos i hit my breter cos hi wos roin in the hausi end thas hoan i hit may broter. [Hi, my spring break was boring because I didn't do nothing just sat staring at the wall because I was punished because I hit my brother. He was running in the house and that's why I hit my brother.] -Jorge, seventh grade English language learner in the same class Both Jorge and Rosa (all names are pseudonyms) are adolescent English language learners (ELLs) in the same seventh grade sheltered English class, a type of instruction in which students receive extra support in learning the language while still learning grade level content. Despite the disparity in their levels of English fluency evidenced in the above excerpts, both students have been placed in the second and final year of sheltered courses in their middle school. In the coming academic year, both will exit into a full day of regular courses for which they must be prepared to undertake grade-level academic concepts in a language that they are still struggling to make their own. In short, both are doing what Short and Fitzsimmons (2007) have recently called double the (p. 1) of ELLs in U.S. schools as they try to learn the English language while simultaneously trying to keep pace with their peers with what can seem an even faster-paced curriculum. Meeting the needs of both Jorge and Rosa, with such a discrepancy in their language levels, can be challenging even to the most experienced language teacher. This article documents how two educators-Jessica, an ESL specialist, and Paige, a researcher interested in language learning-teamed up to find a way to help shelter teachers who are new to the instruction of English language learners. In a two-year project, we matched cohorts of Jessica's students in one-on-one writing partnerships with preservice and inservice teachers who were taking courses focused on ELL pedagogy. In this online writing project, Jorge and Rosa, together with their ELL peers, interacted in a weekly writing exchange that we hoped would be a mutually beneficial experience for the students and inservice teachers. We anticipated, for example, that the ELLs would be more motivated to write when using technology to correspond with a partner outside the school context and that, as a consequence, they would also write more fluently and more confidently in English. We also anticipated that the teachers would benefit from the opportunity to better understand adolescent language learners through a personal one-on-one relationship. This article documents how online writing became a practical, engaging forum for teachers to discuss language learning and teaching and, specifically, to learn how to teach writing to ELL students. Learning about language learners Demographics are changing in many parts of the country, making it quite common for teachers to find a wide variety of ELL levels in their classrooms. In the decade between 1995 and 2005, for example, the overall school population only grew by 3.7%, while the population of limited English proficient (LEP) students grew by 57% (NCELA, 2005). Within the ELL population in secondary schools, 44% are first-generation students who were born outside the United States (Capps et al., 2005). Due to such rapidly changing demographic patterns, many teachers in public schools who work with ELL students are not trained language specialists. …

This study investigated graduate-level international students’ linguistic and learning experiences in classrooms predominated by native English-speaking (NES) students. The central objective was to discern the impact of NES students’ presence on the fear of negative evaluation experienced by international students speaking English as a second language in an American university. A survey was initially administered to 22 graduate-level international students, and five international students, distinguished by heightened levels of anxiety associated with negative evaluation in classrooms primarily dominated by NES students, were interviewed. The interview data were analyzed with domain analysis. The findings elucidated that international students’ fear of negative evaluation depended mainly on instructors’ practices and international students’ perceptions of NES peers’ attitudes. Moreover, the increased fear of negative evaluation adversely impacted their linguistic behaviors and overall engagement with instructional content. The findings implied a need for more inclusive and safe learning environments in graduate schools.