Exploring The Causes of Fear of Foreign Language Learning

Abstract

Anxiety can affect learners in learning any foreign language; in particular speaking class. This is due to the fact that speaking is one the productive skills, as it involves the production of words and phrases in the targeted language. This study generally intends to explore causes of fear in foreign languages, in relation to the English-speaking class. This quantitative study focused on determining the existence of communicative apprehension and fear of negative evaluation among learners of foreign language in English-speaking class. A total of 340 undergraduates; 277 from UiTM Segamat, Johor and 63 from Hunan University, China were employed as the respondents in which the FLACS survey adapted from Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope (1986) was utilised as the instrument to collect data. Data was analysed using SPSS version 26 with the mean ranges between 2.70 to 3.94. The analysis suggests that learners are slightly influenced by the fear in English-speaking class which has led them not to perform well due to the fear of communication, concern over receiving unfavourable feedback and also fear of tests, with the mean ranges between 2.70 to 3.94. Findings from this study would very much facilitate future researchers to discover more on the impacts of students' native languages on their performance in language classes, particularly in English-speaking classes.