THE EFFECTS OF COMMUNICATION ANXIETY ON HIGHER SECONDARY ESL LEARNERS

Abstract

The study investigates the impacts of communication anxiety among higher secondary level ESL students in Ghotki, Pakistan, wherein the majority of learners do not speak a native language, other than English, yet, English is a highly significant academic subject. The communication anxiety compromises the capability of the learners to speak without fear, attend classes and the performances of the learners. The main aim was to identify the level of communication anxiety among the ESL students and to explore how the personal, classroom, and cultural-linguistic factors contribute to communication anxiety (self-esteem, introversion, social anxiety, accent and first language). Moreover, the study was to investigate the impact of anxiety on the classroom participation of learners and academic performance, and to elaborate whether there were gender differences in communication anxiety.

The quantitative research design involving structured questionnaire was followed where 200 students (100 males and 100 females) of four higher secondary schools were employed in Ghotki. The SPSS was used to analyze data, and it utilized the descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression analysis and t-tests. The results showed that a moderate to high level of communication anxiety was found in 78.5% of the learners. The regression analysis findings have identified the personal factors as a significant predictor of communication anxiety (B = 0.45, p = 0.000) followed by the classroom environment predictors (B = 0.32, p = 0.001) and the cultural- linguistic have been determined as predictors (B = 0.28, p = 0.003). Communication anxiety scales were noted to have poor relationship with academic performance (r = -0.32, p = 0.0025). Also, the levels of anxiety among the female learners were very high as compared to the male learners. Communication anxiety is another issue that contributes greatly to effective English learning in Ghotki. The psychological, social, and cultural aspects of ESL should be considered in order to enhance its performance in similar educational settings.