Investigating L2 Students’ Listening Anxiety: A Survey at a Malaysian University

Abstract

Listening anxiety is said to have a direct effect on listeners’ abilities to comprehend what has been said. This is often because listeners are concerned that the message is so complex that they will not be able to understand what they are listening to. In relevance to listening tests, students’ listening anxiety may prove to be a variable that could affect their listening test scores especially for second language (L2) learners. This preliminary study was carried out, as a part of a bigger experimental study to investigate if L2 students experienced listening anxiety. The Foreign Language Learning Survey (FLLAS) (Kim, 2000) was used as the main data collection instrument. The survey comprised of 33 items, which was tested for reliability in this study (Cronbach Alpha α = .928). Eighty-three (n = 83) undergraduate students from one of the universities in Malaysia participated in the survey. The findings of the survey indicated that the students have a rather high level of listening anxiety. This paper elaborates on areas in which students were most anxious about while listening, which may have some implications on the teaching of listening specifically listening comprehension to L2 students.

Investigasi Tingkat Kecemasan Mahasiswa terhadap Empat Keterampilan dalam Bahasa Inggris

“…Meskipun terkategori sedang tetapi hal ini cukup memberikan dampak bagi kemampuan siswa dalam menguasai keterampilan menyimak. Seperti yang disampaikan oleh Tahsildar & Yusoff (2014) bahwa kecemasan dapat dikatakan apat memberikan efek secara langsung pada kemampuan mendengar siswa dalam memahami isi rekaman yang diperdengarkan. Hal ini juga dikarenakan siswa sangat merisaukan tentang pesan yang cukup kompleks yang mereka akan kesulitan dalam memahami apa yang mereka dengarkan.…”

Foreign Language Listening Anxiety among French Language Learners in Malaysia

“…The learners' lack of linguistic knowledge is one of the internal factors of anxiety while listening. The unfamiliar or difficult vocabulary or sentences used in the texts makes students find themselves unable to understand every detail of the message or even incapable to make sense of the listening material (Tahsildar & Yusoff, 2014;Young, 1992). Furthermore, students' attitude and motivation also highly impacted learning anxiety.…”

“…The anxiety score is derived by adding up the 33 items with a total score of 165. The questionnaire had been used to measure learners' anxiety levels in China (Wang & Cha, 2019), in Iran (Ebadi & Oroji, 2016), and among Malaysian University students (Tahsildar & Yusoff, 2014). In this study, to answer the first research question, each student total score in FLLAS survey is analysed.…”

Indonesian L2 learners’ listening anxiety and socio-affective listening strategy: A survey study

“…Though in L2 literature perhaps not as popular as L2 speaking anxiety and reading anxiety highlighted by Horwitz and associates (Horwitz, 2001;Saito, Horwitz, & Garza, 1999), L2 listening anxiety was repeatedly reported as a detrimental factor negatively affecting L2 learning in various learning contexts (Prastiyowati, 2019;Tahsildar & Yusoff, 2014;Tayşi, 2019). These findings suggested that listening anxiety played a part in affecting L2 learning.…”