The Effect of Enjoyment and Anxiety towards Foreign Language Learning Experience among Lower Secondary School in a religious secondary school in Jeram district

Abstract

There is a lot of evidence that secondary school students experience negative feelings when learning foreign languages. Students experience more anxiety when learning the language than enjoyment of interaction and engagement in foreign language learning. Therefore, this study investigates the relationship between Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE) and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (FLCA) in lower secondary students. A questionnaire adapted from Dewaela & MacIntyre (2014), Foreign Language Class Affective Variable, was administered to 20 male students of Sekolah Agama Mengengah Jeram in Selangor. The collected data was analysed using SPSS version 23. Two analyses were conducted: a descriptive analysis of happiness and anxiety and a correlation analysis of FLE and FLCA. The result of the descriptive analysis shows that there is more happiness than anxiety in foreign language classes. However, there were no significant correlations between FLE and FLCA (r = -0.118, p>0.05).

Keywords: Foreign Language ( FL ), Foreign Language Enjoyment ( FLE) , Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety ( FLCA)