Foreign language classroom anxiety among English for Specific Purposes (ESP) students

Abstract

[eng] This study aims at exploring the degree of Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) towards the learning of English that English for Specific Purposes (ESP) students, taking English lessons as a compulsory degree requirement, report experiencing. The participants of this study were 67 undergraduates at the University of the Balearic Islands (U.I.B) enrolled in two university degree programs. The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) (Horwitz et al., 1986) was used to collect data. The findings reveal that most of the students suffered from average to high anxiety levels. Communication apprehension was found to be the main source of participants' FLA followed by fear of negative evaluation, and test anxiety. The data also showed some statistically significant differences across students' university degree programs in terms of test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation. However, in line with previous research (Aida, 1994) no statistically significant gender differences in levels of FLA were observed. Finally, correlation analyses revealed strong significant negative associations between participants' perceived level of English proficiency and their FLA levels associated to listening and speaking skills.