The relationship between foreign language anxiety and decision-making strategies among university students

Abstract

A growing number of studies have stressed the significance of foreign language anxiety in foreign language learning. However, these studies have generally demonstrated foreign language anxiety to be associated with foreign language achievement not with 21st century skills particularly decision-making strategies. Based on this, this study aims to identify the relationship between foreign language anxiety (FLA) and decision-making strategies among university students Moreover, university students' demographic information such as gender, high-school background, and exposure to English was also investigated. The study adopted a survey-based research method. First, a demographic inventory was provided to participants to collect certain personal details for research questions. Then, two scales, Turkish adaptations of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) (Şakrak, 2009) and Decision-making Scale developed by Zaimoğlu (2018) were conducted to students respectively. The results indicated that FLA and Decision-making vary in terms of gender, language background, high school background and exposure to English levels separately. Furthermore, for students' FLA and Decisionmaking strategies, a considerable negative difference was found. This study provides possible suggestions for future research, and makes implications for foreign language learning.

Language Anxiety for Non-Native Speakers: A Review Paper

“…In addition, sentence writing practice (Liu, 2020), genre-based writing module (Uzun & Topkaya, 2018), and extensive reading (Bahmani & Farvardin, 2017) result in lessened anxiety and improved grammar. Also, decision-making strategies involving both teachers and learners (Demir & Zaimoğlu, 2021), virtual reality computer-mediated communication (York et al, 2020), positive consultation (Lia & Liang, 2021), and internal motivation (MacWhinnie & Mitchell, 2017; Zhang et al, 2020) are helpful in avoiding FLA. This help to strengthen learners' self-efficacy and self-directed learning (Choi et al, 2019).…”

English Café: An Initiative to Encourage Undergraduate Learners of Al-Asyah Province to Showcase Their Spoken Proficiency in English

“…According to Demir & Zaimoğlu (2021), foreign language anxiety and decision-making vary in terms of gender, language background, high school background and exposure to English levels separately. Learners of the vernacular medium are very incompetent speakers of EFL.…”

Foreign language anxiety and dependency distance in English–Chinese interpretation classrooms

“…Additionally, more and more studies have focused on the relationship between language anxiety and other learning variables ( Oteir and Al-Otaibi, 2019 ). For example, studies on the relationship of FLA with the following variables: Willingness to communicate ( Liu and Jackson, 2008 ; Rastegar and Karami, 2015 ; Yan et al, 2018 ; Kalsoom et al, 2020 ; Zhou et al, 2020 ), learning style ( Bailey et al, 1999 ), self-efficacy ( Mills et al, 2006 ; Eginli and Solhi, 2020 ; Wang et al, 2022 ), self-confidence ( Bensalem and Thompson, 2022 ), self-esteem ( Rubio-Alcalá, 2017 ), learning autonomy ( Ahmadi and Izadpanah, 2019 ), learning strategies ( Abdurahman and Rizqi, 2020 ; Demir and Zaimoğlu, 2021 ), motivation ( Duvernay, 2009 ; Saito et al, 2018 ; Alamer and Almulhim, 2021 ; Ismail and Hastings, 2021 ), learner beliefs ( Aslan and Thompson, 2021 ), and personality ( Dewaele, 2017 ; Šafranj, 2018 ; Šafranj and Zivlak, 2019 ).…”