The influence of personal and interpersonal factors on language anxiety among university students
List of Authors
  • Imelia Laura Daneil , Siti Faridah Kamaruddin

Keyword
  • Language Anxiety, Panicgogy, Fourth Industrial Revolution, Personal and Interpersonal Factors, English as Second Language (ESL)

Abstract
  • Language anxiety is an impediment for majority of ESL students, particularly Malaysian university students to master language skills at sufficient requirement to be in line with the direction of Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR4). The primary purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between personal and interpersonal factors and specific language skills in the context of Malaysian higher education institutions. In this study, personal (i.e. self-esteem, tolerance of ambiguity, risk taking, competitiveness) and interpersonal factors (i.e. social anxiety and existential anxiety) were the independent variable whereas specific language skills namely listening, speaking, reading and writing were the dependent variable. A total of 125 non-English major students from a local education institution in Malaysia participated in this mixed method study. This study adopted a purposive sampling procedure of data collection using Factors of Language Anxiety Questionnaire (FLAQ) administered at the selected faculty. Data collected was analysed using descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation. For the qualitative part of this study, the highly anxious participants were selected to participate in email interview based on their high score on FLAQ, and the collected qualitative data from semi-structured interview is used to perform triangulation with the quantitative data. It was revealed that the personal and interpersonal factors have impacted differently on each of the specific language skills. This study concluded with several implications for teaching, higher education and future research. Consequently, it is recommended that language educators can act to reduce language anxiety stemming from learners’ personal and interpersonal factors depending on learners’ needs and cultural background to improve their mastery in the four language skills.

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