Severity Analysis of Language Anxiety: Reading and Writing Skills

摘要

Anxiety has been long known to have devastating impact on language learning whereby its adverse manifestation can severely affect spoken and written aspects of communication. Since academic performance heavily relies on language skills, there is an urgency to look into the levels ofanxiety experienced by students so that mitigating strategies may be planned to overcome language-related problems. A study was carried out to investigate the language anxiety on all four English Language skills among undergraduates in a local public university. However, this paper reportsonly on the severity analysis of the reading and writing skills based on the theoretical framework derived from cross comparison of language anxiety sources listed by Young (1991) and Oxford (1999). Using a mixed-methods approach, the quantitative data were obtained using the Factors of LanguageAnxiety Questionnaire (FLAQ) while the qualitative data were acquired through interviews with eight participants chosen based on their FLAQ scores. In total, 125 participants responded to the questionnaire and eight students participated in the interview. The findings revealed that writingskills tend to be more severely impacted compared reading. However, the respondents’ writing anxiety is found to be at moderate level while the reading anxiety is not at a serious level which requires the students to seek proper guidance on the situation. Suggestions to address the negativeimpact of language anxiety on reading and writing skills have been put forward so that corrective measures, specifically the pedagogical and learning focus of language learning, can be implemented to alleviate English Language anxiety.