VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES POST-GRADUATE DEPARTMENT - HỒ THỊ ÁNH FACTORS INFLUENCING FIRST-YEAR NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ ANXIETY IN SPEAKING CLASSES AT ACADEMY OF POLICY AND DEVELOPMENT- SOME POSSIBLE TECHNIQUES TO OVERCOME THE PROBLEMS (NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC YẾU TỐ GÂY NÊN SỰ LO LẮNG TRONG GIỜ HỌC KỸ NĂNG NÓI CỦA SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT Ở HỌC VIỆN CHÍNH SÁCH VÀ PHÁT TRIỂN: MỘT SỐ THỦ THUẬT KHẮC PHỤC) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Methodology Code: 6014.0111 Hanoi, 2013 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES POST-GRADUATE DEPARTMENT - HỒ THỊ ÁNH FACTORS INFLUENCING FIRST-YEAR NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS’ ANXIETY IN SPEAKING CLASSES AT ACADEMY OF POLICY AND DEVELOPMENT- SOME POSSIBLE TECHNIQUES TO OVERCOME THE PROBLEMS (NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC YẾU TỐ GÂY NÊN SỰ LO LẮNG TRONG GIỜ HỌC KỸ NĂNG NĨI CỦA SINH VIÊN KHƠNG CHUN NĂM THỨ NHẤT Ở HỌC VIỆN CHÍNH SÁCH VÀ PHÁT TRIỂN: MỘT SỐ THỦ THUẬT KHẮC PHỤC) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Methodology Code: 6014.0111 Supervisor: Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Quỳnh, Ph.D Hanoi, 2013 DECLARATION I hereby declare that this thesis is entirely my own work I have provided fully documented references to the work of others The material in this thesis has not been submitted for assessment in any other formal course of study Hanoi, September 2013 Signature Hồ Thị Ánh i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to show my sincere appreciation to many people who supported me to complete this present study Firstly, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my respectful supervisor, Ph.D Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Quỳnh, who provided me with a lot of professional advice on the thesis writing I am really grateful to her kind consideration, tender guidance, critical feedback and insightful suggestions Without her care, I could not have been able to finish this study Secondly, I am also grateful to all the lecturers of the Post-Graduate Department of University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University Hanoi for their valuable teaching and assistance during my course Thirdly, I would also like to acknowledge my gratefulness to the participants of this study: the first – year students at Academy of Policy and Development Without their willingness to complete the questionnaires and participate in the interviews, this study could not have been conducted Finally, I wish to express my deep thanks to my dear family, especially my older sister for their love, encouragement, immeasurable support and concrete help for me to complete this research ii ABSTRACT Feeling anxiety, apprehension are common phenomena experienced by foreign language learners, especially in learning to speak a foreign language These negative feelings are blamed to exert detrimental effect on communication in the target language This current research, therefore, was conducted with the aim to investigate main factors of speaking anxiety phenomenon in the first year students at Academy of Policy and Development (APD) The study involved 50 students from first-year classes at APD Through the use of quantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews) methods as research instruments and six sources of language anxiety as theoretical guideline for data collection and analysis, major findings were drawn First, the speaking anxiety tendency of the students surveyed was obvious Second, some factors believed to contribute to students‟ anxiety were also identified, among which the personal and interpersonal anxieties seemed to be most highly regarded by the students Several pedagogical strategies of these findings were offered to assist instructors in helping learners acknowledge, cope with, and reduce anxiety, as well as to encourage them to make the learning context less stressful to their students iii TABLE OF CONTENT INTRODUCTION 1 RATIONALE AIMS OF THE STUDY RESEARCH QUESTIONS SCOPE OF THE STUDY METHODS OF THE STUDY DESIGN OF THE STUDY CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW THEORETICAL BACKGROUND OF ANXIETY 1.1 Definition of anxiety 1.2 Types of anxiety 1.3 Foreign language anxiety 1.4 Effect of anxiety on Foreign Language Learning 1.5 Sources of foreign language anxiety 1.6 Anxiety management strategies: 11 SPEAKING 13 2.1 Definition of speaking 13 2.2 Roles of speaking in language teaching and learning 14 CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY 15 SETTING 15 PARTICIPANTS 15 DATA COLLECTION 16 3.1 Instruments 16 3.2 Data collection procedure 17 DATA ANALYSIS: 18 CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 19 SOURCES OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANXIETY 19 1.1 Personal and interpersonal anxiety 19 1.2 Learner beliefs about language learning 21 1.3 Instructor beliefs about language teaching 23 1.4 Instructor-learner interactions 26 1.5 Classroom procedures 29 iv 1.6 Language testing 31 CHAPTER IV: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION 33 1.SUMMARY OF THE STUDY 2.SOLUTIONS 2.1 SOLUTIONS RELATED TO PERSONAL AND INTERPERSONAL ANXIETY 34 2.2 SOLUTIONS RELATED TO LEARNER BELIEFS ABOUT LANGUAGE LEARNING 35 2.3 SOLUTIONS RELATED TO INSTRUCTOR BELIEFS ABOUT LANGUAGE TEACHING 36 2.4 SOLUTIONS RELATED TO INSTRUCTOR-LEARNER INTERACTIONS 36 2.5 SOLUTIONS RELATED TO CLASSROOM PROCEDURES 38 2.6 SOLUTIONS RELATED TO LANGUAGE TESTING 38 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 39 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES 39 REFERENCES 40 APPENDIX I APPENDIX IV v INTRODUCTION Rationale Learning a second language seems to be exciting for many people while others struggle and even fail to achieve their desired level of language proficiency It is believed that second language acquisition (SLA) is determined and affected by many different factors Since the ground- breaking research of the Canadian psychologists R.C Gardner and Wallace Lambert about attitudes and motivation in second language learning in the 1970s, SLA researchers have also considered affective or emotional variables and how these factors may facilitate or hinder language acquisition (Horwitz, Tallon, & Luo, 2010, p 95) Among various affective variables like attitude, anxiety, interest, motivation, inhibition, and selfesteem, “anxiety is quite possibly the affective factor that most pervasively obstructs the learning process” (Arnold & Brown, 1999, cited in Dornyei, 2005, p 198) As a result, Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) has been gradually becoming the research focus and interest of many language professionals as well as educators They have provided detailed understanding of FLA from different aspects: theoretical models and frameworks of FLA (e.g., Tobias, 1977; Horwitz et al., 1991; MacIntyre & Garner, 1994a, 1994b); sources and characteristics of FLA (e.g., Horwitz,1988; Koch & Terrell,1991; Young 1991); FLA effects on FL proficiency and performance ( e.g., Kleinman, 1977; Madsen, 1982; Young, 1986); and anxiety management strategies (e.g., Long & Porter, 1985; Price, 1991; Young, 1991) Although a large number of studies in FLA have been carried out to investigate the nature of FLA, to the best of the author‟s knowledge, little has been done on anxiety experienced by Vietnamese learners in their English learning process In Vietnam, English has been now widely taught in almost all educational institutions, at every level Thus, learning English in Vietnam has gained a remarkable achievement However, in comparison with other developed countries, learning speaking skill in Vietnam is not really efficient As a teacher of English at Academy of Policy and Development (APD), from her own observations and experience, the present researcher has noticed that the feeling of anxiety, apprehension and nervousness are common phenomena experienced by her first year students Notably, the level of anxiety has been observed to be higher in speaking classes compared with other ones, therefore, the outcome of oral English speaking is not satisfactory These negative emotional factors seem to maintain a barrier that prevents students from actively participating in speaking activities Such situation has aroused her interest and inspired the author to conduct a research on the topic: “Factors influencing first-year non-English major students’ anxiety in speaking classes at Academy of Policy and Development- Some possible techniques to overcome the problem” Aims of the study The aim of the study is to find out the main causes that make first - year students at Academy of Policy and Development stressful and anxious in speaking English classrooms and then suggest some possible techniques for dealing with students‟ anxiety in speaking classes Research questions The study is carried out with an attempt to answer the following question: What are the main factors influencing first year non - English major students’ anxiety in speaking classes at APD? What is the most common factor? Scope of the study FLA exists in the process of learning all the four skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing (Aida, 1994; Horwitz, Horwitz & Cope, 1986; Young, 1986; Cheng, Horwitz & Schallert, 1999; Cheng, 2002; Saito et al., 1999; Vogely, 1998) However, this study only focuses on anxiety of speaking skill with its causes as speaking is the best in expressing the students‟ participation as well as their feelings For its strong evidence- bearing capacity, speaking is chosen as a major indicator to measure participation Moreover, due to the time constraints, this study only involves a small number of APD students in their first academic year Methods of the study The data serving the research analysis are collected by using both quantitative and qualitative methods A survey questionnaire for informants of 50 first- year non majors of English at Academy of Policy and Development was used to gather information and evidence for the study In addition, to gain more in-depth information of the issue, semi- structured interviews with the informants were also applied Design of the study The study consists of three parts: Introduction presents the rationale, the aims, the research question, the scope, the method and the design of the study + Chapter I: Literature Review provides the basic theoretical background from literature in terms of speaking, foreign language anxiety in general and speaking anxiety in particular Especially, the effect and possible causes of anxiety, which are the main issues of the study, are discussed thoroughly in this chapter + Chapter II: Methodology deals with the overall picture of how the research was carried out + Chapter III: Data Analysis and Findings interprets the answer of research question: What are the main factors influencing first year non - English major students‟ anxiety in speaking classes at APD? What is the most common factor? The findings of potential sources of speaking anxiety are reported and discussed in this chapter + Chapter IV: Dicussion and Conclusion summarizes the main contents and findings of the study as well as the limitations of the study and suggestions for further study and suggests possible techniques for both teachers and students with an aim to reduce and cope with anxiety in speaking classes ... DEVELOPMENT- SOME POSSIBLE TECHNIQUES TO OVERCOME THE PROBLEMS (NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC YẾU TỐ GÂY NÊN SỰ LO LẮNG TRONG GIỜ HỌC KỸ NĂNG NÓI CỦA SINH VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT Ở HỌC VIỆN CHÍNH SÁCH VÀ... VIÊN KHÔNG CHUYÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT Ở HỌC VIỆN CHÍNH SÁCH VÀ PHÁT TRIỂN: MỘT SỐ THỦ THUẬT KHẮC PHỤC) M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Methodology Code: 6014.0111 Supervisor: Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Quỳnh,... However, in comparison with other developed countries, learning speaking skill in Vietnam is not really efficient As a teacher of English at Academy of Policy and Development (APD), from her own observations