An Investigation into English as a Foreign Language Listening Anxiety among Taiwanese Senior High School Students

Cheng-Chang Tsai

doi:10.5296/ijld.v3i4.4247

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the differences between genders as well as the proficiency differences of students who experienced English listening anxiety at a senior high school in Taiwan. The participants were 102 randomly selected students at a senior high school in Taiwan. An English listening anxiety questionnaire was adopted for data collection. The results have shown that students attributed the cause of anxiety to the fear of listening time constraint, the fear of fast speaking speed, a lack of prior knowledge, a lack of adequate knowledge about vocabulary and topics. The results showed there was no significant difference between male and female students in terms of their English listening anxieties in this study. On the contrary, the results showed there was a significant difference between two different proficiency groups in terms of their English listening anxieties. On the average, lower level listening proficiency group students had higher English listening anxieties than higher level listening proficiency group students. Keywords: EFL listening anxiety, gender, proficiency levels, senior high school students

Highlights

Listening comprehension is one of the four basic skills that a foreign language learner should acquire, and it is the most significant one
This study aimed to explore the differences between genders as well as the proficiency differences of students who experienced English listening anxiety at a senior high school in Taiwan
The results showed there was no significant difference between male and female students in terms of their English listening anxieties in this study

Summary

Introduction

Listening comprehension is one of the four basic skills (i.e. listening, speaking, reading, writing) that a foreign language learner should acquire, and it is the most significant one. Listening comprehension is totally different from the other basic skills (speaking, reading, writing) of language learning. It is unlike reading comprehension in which readers can go back and forward to explore the information that they are not quite sure about and might not understand completely. All the listeners can do is to catch up with the spea kers as soon as possible Because of this main reason, most of senior high school students are afraid of EFL listening comprehension and are under a lot of pressure due to listening time constraints. The present study aims to fill in this gap in the literature as it examined the extent of listening anxiety experienced by senior high school

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