Comparing Foreign Language Anxiety in American Students Taking a Foreign Language With Bulgarian, Chinese, and the English Language Institute Students Learning English as a Foreign Language

Melissa Ames

Date of Graduation

Fall 2002

Degree

Master of Science in Education in Literacy

Department

Reading, Foundations, and Technology

Committee Chair

Rebecca Swearingen

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare foreign language anxiety in students from the United States with foreign language anxiety in students from other countries who are learning English as a foreign language. The study was guided by five research questions. A survey was edited by the researcher in order to gather information from students who were learning a foreign language. Surveys were distributed in both spring and fall, 2002. Conclusions drawn from this study included the following: (a) the data indicated the university students who were enrolled in the United States Spanish class experienced the most total anxiety; (b) for the data involving confidence levels, the French class was the most confident; (c) for the data involving anxiety levels, the Bulgarian class was most anxious; (d) in comparing both confidence levels and anxiety levels among all five study groups, all groups were more anxious than confident in their foreign language class; (e) the study group with the highest reading anxiety was the study group from China; (f) speaking anxiety levels were highest with the Spanish class; (g) when charted together, speaking anxiety was higher than reading anxiety for all five study groups; (h) the Spanish class's score in relations to word for word translation was the highest.

Subject Categories

Other Education

Copyright

© Melissa Ames

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Dissertation/Thesis

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