Language Anxiety and Motivation to Learn English: A Glimpse into the Form 4 Classroom

This paper presents the findings of a study on Form 4 students' anxiety and motivation in learning English. One hundred and seventy-seven Form 4 students (90 males, 87 females) from a government secondary school in Kuching participated in this study. Scores from a language anxiety scale showed that 17.5% of the students were at the low language anxiety (LLA) level while 68.4% were at the moderate language anxiety (MLA) level, and 14.1% were at the high language anxiety (HLA) level. Independent samples t-test showed that overall there was no significant gender difference (p is greater than 0.05) in language anxiety. However, girls were significantly more anxious than boys were when it came to "volunteering answers", "speaking in English", and "afraid of being laughed at." Content analysis of students' responses to a questionnaire on learning English revealed that HLA students reported of less effort at improving their proficiency in English compared to LLA students. Students' responses regarding how they felt in English class and why they felt that way provide valuable insights into the "unobservable" dimension of classroom interaction. In conclusion, pedagogical implications of the findings are put forward. (Contains 3 tables.)