The Relationship between English Learning Anxiety and the Students' Achievement on Examinations

Abstract

Research in educational settings points out that some affective factors influence the students' performance positively or negatively. Anxiety, considered as one of the factors affecting the students' achievement, includes levels of communicative anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, test anxiety, and anxiety of English class or classroom. Hence, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between English language anxiety and the students' achievement in their examinations. To this end, 258 freshmen majoring in different fields of medicine at Gonabad University of Medical Sciences were recruited as the study participants. Two instruments were employed to collect data. The first one was the Persian version of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale questionnaire (FLCAS) completed during the semester to determine the anxiety level on a five-point Likert scale, and the second was an achievement test administered at the end of the term. The obtained results were analyzed using correlation, t-test, and descriptive statistics through SPSS software V.19. The results showed that high anxiety affected the students' achievement (r=0.348, p<0.001). Moreover, the English classroom anxiety proved to be much more significant than other anxiety levels (r=0.36). Nonetheless, the mean value of fear of negative evaluation was higher than those of other FLCAS components. Finally, some implications and suggestions were set forth for teachers/students to take into account so that they might reduce English learning anxiety in classrooms.