A Study of English Language Anxiety on the Academic Performance

of B.Ed students in Ambala district

Dr. Renu Sohta (Principal)
Lord Krishna College of Education
Adhoya, Barara (Ambala)
Email-principallkcoe@gmail.com, sohtarenu@gmail.com
Contact No: 01731-283315, 09996813655

Abstract- Psychological concerns with the prediction of individual performance, in recent years,
have brought up many questions including what factors come into play in a student’s
performance in taking an exam (Sanyal, 2006). English Language anxiety is particularly evident
in the classroom, and is a strong indicator of academic performance. As the English language is
a foreign language, the students get the fear; negative predisposition and anxiety consider it as a
difficult task. The main objective of this study is to address the issue of prospective teachers’
anxiety towards the learning of English Language at B.Ed level. The survey method is adopted in
this study. The sample consists of 50 B.Ed students from Lord Krishna College of Education,
Adhoya (Ambala).The English Language Classroom Anxiety Scale developed by Researcher and
the Students’ Cycle Test 2016/2017 are used to collect the data. The mean, standard deviation, T
– test and correlational analysis were used to collect the data. The results revealed that there
exists significant relationship between language anxiety and academic performance of B.Ed
students in Ambala district, and there is no significant difference between anxiety and academic
performance in English of the students with respect to gender, qualification, locality, and stream
of study. The paper concludes with recommendations for teaching and research that recognize
the complexity of anxiety for English language learners.

Keywords: Academic, Anxiety, English Language, and Performance

Introduction

A number of causes of English Language anxiety (ELA) have been identified in many studies
(Abu-Ghararah, 1999; Aida, 1994; Batumlu & Erden, 2007; Anyadubalu, 2010; Atasheneh &
Izadi, 2012; Young, 1991; MacIntyre & Gardner, 1991 Horwitz, 2001; MacIntyre ,1998,
1994;Mahmood & Iqbal, 2010). Due to limited exposure to English language in some parts of
the country especially villages language learners face serious problems in the development of
their communicative competency. English learners feel afraid because of “a fear of appearing
awkward, foolish and incompetent in the eyes of learners‟ peers or others”. As a result of the fear
of making mistakes, some learners expressed that learning and speaking a foreign language in
the classroom is “always a problem”. Social factors seem more important than linguistic factors
in causing language anxiety. Although the B.Ed course is a good teachers’ training course, there
is no specific training in the methods and techniques of teaching English as a second language.
While the teaching of these other subjects is content based, the teaching of English is skill-based.
It is a common experience that many students of B.Ed course studying English can read and
understand English, but they can’t speak English fluently. Students from regional background
face many difficulties in picking up the second language when they had been exposed to
teaching in government and private schools. Academically, most of the students are not properly

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trained in schools and colleges. It is therefore essential that practice and training for the four
basic language skills-listening, speaking, reading and writing should be provided to learners to
facilitate the teaching and learning for B.Ed programme.

Need and Justification of the Study

We live in a multilingual and multicultural world, which is being shrunk to the size of a village
by the advancement of science and technology. Various technologies deliver different kinds of
content and serve different purposes in the classroom (Aggarwal, 2004). English being a foreign
language and introduced as a second language poses many problems to the learners in the
process of learning it. Anxiety is one of the most important obstacles to language learning. It has
been observed that some students in English language classrooms experienced anxiety that
results in shuttering and fast heartbeat. The studies at national level showed that the students had
high extent of language anxiety in learning English language (Hemanalini, 2007) and a low
positive correlation has been observed between academic performance and anxiety level of
students (Ramakrishna, 2007) and the variables like academic performance and anxiety are
closely related to each other. English language is the widely taught second language, practically
at all levels of education. But unfortunately in these departments, a majority of students got no
serious exposure to English as a language. The teachers are not trained at all in the basic
methodology of teaching language or in teaching the structure of English language. This has
created a serious pedagogical and educational problem. In many cases it cripples the students’
capacity, freeze their academic efforts and enthusiasm and paralyze their personality.
Researchers of foreign language education have investigated the effects of language anxiety on
learning. Anxiety has been recognized as an important factor that influences the process of
learning English language (Mirjam & Stella 2005; Onwuegbuzie & Anthony 1998). These
studies shed some light on the role of anxiety in English language learning. They found that the
college students, who were more anxious, received significantly lower final grades than less
anxious students. They also give some useful suggestions to reduce anxiety in the language
classrooms. The teachers of English or the enthusiastic researchers should take initiative to take
some remarkable work in this field and should introduce innovative practices in teaching English
language in an effective manner. It is in this background, that study of English Language’
Anxiety on the Academic Performance of B.Ed students was undertaken.

Statement of the Problem

Keeping in view the above justification, the present study is entitled “A Study of English
Language’ Anxiety on the Academic Performance of B.Ed students in Ambala district”.

Objectives of the Study

1. To study the influence of (a) Gender (b) Qualification (c) Locality on language learning
anxiety of B.Ed students in Ambala district.
2. To study the relation between academic performance and anxiety of B.Ed students in
Ambala district.

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 3. To identify possible remedies for the problem.
Hypotheses
1. There is no significant difference between English Language anxiety and students’
academic performance of B.Ed students with respect to (a) Gender (b) Locality
(c).Qualification.
2. There is no relationship between English Language anxiety and academic performance of the
B.Ed students in Ambala district.
Review of Related Literature

Language anxiety simply speaking is a kind of troubled feeling in the mind. It is a subjective
feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness and worry associate with an arousal of the
automatic nervous system (Horwitz, 1986). Language anxiety, the target of this paper, belongs to
the situation-specific anxiety, which is the apprehension experienced when a situation requires
the use of a second language with which the individuals aren’t fully proficient (Macintyre, 1993).
According to Young (1991) there are six potential causes of language anxiety, which include
personal and interpersonal learning beliefs about language teaching, interactions, classroom
procedures and language tests. Ramakrishna (2007) in his study on M.Ed students found that
there is a low positive correlation between academic performance and anxiety level of students.
Joshi (2015) concluded that English language has been an issue raised by most of the students for
whom it is a second language. The incompatibility about speaking English could be not only
because of the lack of technical knowledge, but also due to the fear of speaking. The fear thus
keeps on accumulating in student’s mind and they further hesitate to speak English. Eladi (2016)
in his study found a considerable number of foreign language learners experience a feeling of
anxiety in language learning process. The purpose of his research was to find out foreign
language anxiety levels of students studying in the Faculty of English Language and Literature at
Cumhuriyet University, Sivas, Turkey. The research was carried out on 98 students (57 female).
Research data were collected through Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale. Although
foreign language anxiety levels of the students were found at moderate level both in preparatory
class and in fourth grade, students had slightly higher anxiety level in fourth grade than they had
in preparatory class. However, foreign language anxiety among males was found higher than
females.

Method of Study: The researcher used the survey method for collection of the data.
Population of the Study
The target population for the present study comprises the entire B.Ed students of Lord Krishna
College of Education, Adhoya (Ambala).
Table 1.1
Composition of the Sample
Sr.No’s City Name of the Institution Class Number of students
1. Adhoya Lord Krishna College of Education B.Ed(Ist) 100
2. Adhoya Lord Krishna College of Education B.Ed(2nd) 100

Total 200

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Sample of the Study
The researcher used simple random sampling and selected 50 B.Ed students studying Teaching
of English as optional subject from Adhoya village in Ambala district.

Tools Used in the Study

English Language Anxiety Scale comprised of 33 items consisted of the areas like
communication anxiety, test anxiety, fear of English learning was used for the present study. The
researcher collected the B.Ed students’ cycle test 2016/2017 marks for academic performance
scores.

Statistical Technique Used

 t-test of significance of difference between means
 Product Moment Coefficient of correlation.

Analysis and Interpretation of Data

Section-I deals with the differential analysis with respect to (a) Gender (b) Qualification (c)
Locality. The assessment of the significant difference between English Language anxiety and
students academic performance with respect to gender, locality and qualification was done by
employing Mean, Standard deviation, t-test given in the wide Table No. 1.2

Table No. 1.2

1.2 Significant Difference between English Language Anxiety and Students Academic
Performance With Respect To Gender
Variable Groups N Mean S.D. t-ratio Level of
Significance
Male 24 116.82 15.32 2.164 Significant at .01
Gender level
Female 26 110.23 36.02

Table No. 1.3

1.3 Significant Difference between English Language Anxiety and Students Academic
Performance with respect to locality
Variable Groups N Mean S.D. t-ratio Level of
Significance
Rural 38 136.40 5.39 1.57 Significant at .01
Locality level
Urban 12 114.93 4.90

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 Table No. 1.4
1.4 Significant Difference between English Language Anxiety and Students Academic
Performance with respect to qualification
Variable Class N Mean S.D. t-ratio Level of
Significance
B.Ed 26 127.24 5.15
Qualification (Ist) 0.94 Non-Significant
B.Ed 24 124.70 5.09 at .01 level
(2nd)

Correlation Analysis
Section-2 deals with the correlation analysis of English language anxiety and academic
performance of B.Ed students in Adhoya village of Ambala district. Table 1.5 displayed the
results in respective section.
Table No. 1.5
1.5 CORRELATION OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE ANXIETY ANDACADEMIC
PERFORMANCES OF THE STUDENTS
Variable N df Calculated tabulated Level of
“r” value value Significance
English
Language 50 37 0.23 0.132 Significant at .01
Anxiety level
And
Academic
Performance

Main Findings of the Study

In the light of the interpretation of the results as already discussed that there exists significance
difference between English language anxiety and the students’ academic performance with
respect to gender. The mean value of male students was more than the female students. In the
past, numerous studies conducted on this topic reported different results in various contexts. For
instance, Gokhan and Nurdan (2012) investigated the impact of gender on FLA among 225
females and 158males at the pre-intermediate level in Turkey. The results showed that the female
learners get more anxious than the male learners while speaking in English in classroom. In
terms of locality, the result reveals that the calculated t-value is less than the tabulated value 1.96
at 0.05 levels. Therefore, there exists no significant difference between English Language
anxiety and students’ academic performance with respect to locality. Şener (2015) claims that
high level of anxiety is a general problem of English language learners who cannot speak in
front of others although they know English grammar well due to their being less motivated, not
having enough self-confidence or practice to speak in English. Additionally, some other factors
like lack of effort, lack of motivation, poor language learning habits and low ability in language
learning (Schwarz, 1997) seem to be the reason for anxiety and failure. There exists no

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significant difference between English Language anxiety and students’ academic performance
with respect to qualification. The correlational analysis reveals significant relationship between
English Language anxiety and academic performance of the students. There are many studies
that have investigated the relationship between the level of anxiety and the performance of the
students and the results were mixed as the relationship between these two factors is to some
extent complex. There are many factors that affect the performance such as the difficulty of the
task and the level of anxiety (MacIntyre & Gardner, 1991; Williams, 1991).

Implications of the study

On the basis of the findings of the study and observations made by the investigator during the
study, here are a few educational implications which may help us to understand the problem and
improve the educational system:

 Different strategies like memory strategies, cognitive strategies, and social strategies may
be employed in the classroom for reducing anxiety of the students.
 To acquire a sensibility for the sounds and rhythm of a language, one has to hear the best
samples of a spoken language.
 Students’ self-confidence can be built up by using positive reinforcement and more
encouragement especially in rural areas.
 The Language laboratory, an audio or audio-visual installation can be used as an aid in
modern language learning.
 The study has implications for the teachers to change the classroom atmosphere from the
traditional notes-taking and mugging up activity to a lively, anxiety-free and activity
oriented atmosphere.
Conclusion
These results suggest that there is need for school and college based provision aimed at
proactively increasing pupils’ self-esteem, self-concept and skills for dealing with stressful
situations. Although this investigation was limited by small convenience sample, there can be
several implications for schools and colleges at a deeper level. This information about the
relationship between language anxiety and academic performance could be important for teacher
educators who develop educational progress and implement teaching strategies for a better
future.
References
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Joshi, S. (2015). An analysis of cause of English language anxiety amongst hotel management
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Hemamalini, H. C. (2007). Reducing language anxiety to improve the process of learning

English; Edutracks, Dec-2007, Vol.7.No.4.

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