Abstract
Feelings of anxiety are commonly expressed by Saudi learners in their English as a foreign language (EFL) classes. These feelings typically exert detrimental effects on these learners’ foreign language attainment. This paper reports on the findings of a large-scale study for which three data collection iterations were conducted over three years to investigate the levels and sources of foreign language anxiety (FLA) among 1389 Saudi EFL learners. Learners were asked to report the amount of anxiety they typically experienced in English language classes and the potential causes that aroused their feelings of language anxiety. The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) was used to evaluate learners’ anxiety. Descriptive statistics, such as mean and standard deviation, were used to assess the levels of learners’ anxiety, and an explanatory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted to identify the sources that evoked learners’ anxiety in classroom-based language learning. Participating learners in the three studies reported moderate to high levels of anxiety, with communication being the key cause of learners’ language anxiety. The three studies’ findings were highly consistent, and thus, we were able to propose a context-based model of FLA in the Saudi EFL context.
Highlights
Teaching and learning English in Saudi Arabia serves a limited purpose because the language is still considered a foreign language in the Kingdom (Aljafen, 2013) and is not actively used in everyday activities
This paper reports on the findings of a large-scale study for which three data collection iterations were conducted over three years to investigate the levels and sources of foreign language anxiety (FLA) among 1389 Saudi English as a foreign language (EFL) learners
The low perceived self-esteem with which Saudi EFL learners typically begin and the negative social comparisons with peers as a result of competitiveness in class could contribute to language anxiety (Hamouda, 2013)
Summary
Fakieh Alrabai1 1 Department of English, Faculty of Arts, King Khaild University, Muhayel Aseer campus, Saudi Arabia Received: April 11, 2014 Accepted: May 20, 2014 Online Published: June 13, 2014 doi:10.5539/elt.v7n7p82 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v7n7p82
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