Anxiety Level Towards Learning A Foreign Language: a Focus On Learning Japanese Language Among Utm Students

It is believed that the students in a foreign language class are having difficulties where they tend to be more worried and anxious during the learning period (Price, 1991). Since anxiety can influence the foreign language learning and acquisition, it is necessary to increase the awareness on the severity of the problem. This study was conducted to identify the students perceptions as well as to determine the differences of anxiety level for different gender, race and the three different groups which are the TESL group, Elective (With Credit) group and Elective (Without Credit) group who enrolled in the Japanese language class based on different purposes. A total of 96 respondents in this study were taken among UTM students. The instrument used in this study was a set of questionnaire adapted from the measurement scale of foreign language anxiety called FLCAS (Foreign Language Class Anxiety Scale) which was introduced by Horwitz (1983). The questionnaire consisted of two different sections which were the personal details and the contributing factors of foreign language anxiety. The factors are the Communication Apprehension, Fear of Negative Evaluation, General Feeling of Anxiety and Overall Level of Anxiety. The responses in the questionnaires were represented by using the Likert Scale. The data obtained were analyzed by using SPSS version 10 where it involved the use of percentage, frequency, t-Test and One- Way ANOVA. The findings of this study indicate that there are significant differences of anxiety level between race and Communication Apprehension factor as well as between groups and General Feeling of Anxiety factor. However, there are no significant differences between the anxiety level and gender for all the anxiety factors.