Freshmens anxiety in an intensive listening class: A qualitative study

Abstract

Listening skill is an ability to understand a spoken language. It is also one of the important skills that people actively use in their daily lives. For learning English language at the Faculty of Language and Arts (FLA) at Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana (UKSW) Salatiga, Indonesia, there are several listening classes. One of them is Intensive Listening class, which is often considered as one of the most difficult listening classes by freshmen. Freshmen seem to be quite anxious in attending this class, and because of that anxiety, it is hard for them to attend the class comfortably. Even though not all freshmen thought that way, listening is still often considered as a complex skill, even among sophomores or older students. Thus, this research aims to investigate students' sources of anxiety and ways to remedy it. The participants in this study were 2017 students. The population was 80 students of four parallel intensive listening classes and all the students were selected as the respondents. In other words, the whole population was used as the sample of this study. Data were collected through interviews and questionnaires. Findings revealed that 46 out of 80 students admitted that they felt anxious while the remaining 34 students admitted they did not feel anxious during the intensive listening. In this research, the symptoms, levels, and the reasons for being anxious in the intensive listening class are explained.