The degree of foreign language anxiety among Finnish university learners of English

The analysis of the data derived from the Finnish FLCAS shows that the degree of FLA among the studied groups of Finnish university learners of English is relatively low, and therefore both the English and the non-English major learners can be described as slightly anxious. However, the degree of FLA was significantly higher among the non-English major learners than it was among the English major learners. The analysis also shows that 16.4% of the studied English majors and 28.8% of the studied non-English experienced debilitating anxiety. This chapter explains the analysis and results of the degree of FLA among Finnish university learners of English.

To begin the analysis of the data derived from the Finnish FLCAS and to yield results to the first research question, I calculated the descriptive statistics for the FLCAS responses of each participant as well as for each FLCAS item. I calculated the FLCAS score for each participant simply by adding up the Likert-scale responses. As mentioned in chapter 2.5, items that indicated a lack of anxiety (items #2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 18, 22, 28, 32) were reverse scored, so that a high score corresponded with high levels of anxiety. I then organized the participants according to their FLCAS score from lowest to highest, and determined item-ratings for each participant. As shown in chapter 2.5, the item ratings were determined according to the FLCAS scores and the corresponding means:

participants with a score mean of 1–2 were defined as non-anxious, participants with a score mean of 2–3 were defined as slightly anxious, participants with a score mean of 3–4 were defined as considerably anxious, and participants with a score mean of 4–5 were defined as very anxious. In addition, I calculated the number of participants in each of the aforementioned categories as well as the corresponding percentage of the total amount of English or non-English major participants.

The results are presented in the Tables 3–6 below.

Table 3. Descriptive statistics for item-ratings and FLCAS scores: English majors English majors (N=73)

Mean (M) Std Dev (SD) Actual range

(possible range)

Item-rating 2.38 0.70 1.27–4.58

(1–5)

FLCAS score 78.56 22.94 42–151

(33–165)

Table 4. Distribution of English majors according to item-ratings and FLCAS scores English majors (N=73)

Item-rating FLCAS score Percentage

(N) 1–2

non-anxious 42–65 34.2%

(25) 2–3

slightly anxious 66–98 49.3%

(36) 3–4

considerably anxious 100–126 13.7%

(10) 4–5

very anxious 138–151 2.7%

(2)

Based on the analysis of the FLCAS scores the degree of FLA among English major participants can be described as relatively low. The descriptive statistics for item-ratings and FLCAS scores of the 73 English major participants are presented in Table 3. The item-rating mean 2.38 and FLCAS score mean 78.56 indicate that as a group the English majors were slightly anxious. As the item-rating and the FLCAS score range in Table 3 and the statistics in Table 4 show, the distribution of the participants in the anxiety scale is very wide ranging from the lowest score of 42 to the highest 151. Thus, it can be stated that the English major participants were quite divided with their experiences of FLA. About half of the participants (49.3%, N=36) fell into the slightly anxious category, which means that about half of the learners experienced some amounts of FLA.

Fortunately, the non-anxious participants formed the second largest category (34.2%, N=25) among the English majors. Consequently, I did not find an alarmingly high number of English major students who experienced high levels of FL anxiety. However, a total of 12 participants fell into the categories of considerably anxious or very anxious learners, which means that in total 16.4% of the English majors experienced high levels of anxiety. In chapter 2.3 I theorized that anxiety has a debilitating influence on learning for those participants who fall into the considerably

anxious or very anxious groups on the FLCAS. With this in mind we can argue that 16.4% of the studied English majors experienced FLA that has a debilitating influence on their learning.

However, as mentioned before the sources and influences of FLA are most likely not unambiguous, and therefore, I also studied other data sources, which in this case were the open-ended questions.

Chapters 5.4.2 and 6 scrutinize the data derived from the open-ended questions.

Table 5. Descriptive statistics for item-ratings and FLCAS scores: Non-English majors Non-English majors (N=52)

Table 6. Distribution of non-English majors according to item-ratings and FLCAS scores Non-English majors (N=52)

Item-rating FLCAS score Percentage

(N) 1–2

non-anxious 37–63 25.0%

(13) 2–3

slightly anxious 66–96 46.2%

(24) 3–4

considerably anxious 99–130 25.0%

(13) 4–5

very anxious 133–148 3.8%

(2)

As with the group of English majors, the analysis of the FLCAS scores of the studied group of 52 non-English majors showed that the degree of FLA among non-English majors is relatively low, and therefore as a group the non-English majors can be described as slightly anxious. However, as Table 5 shows the non-English majors’ average FLCAS score (M=84.60, SD=25.71) was higher

than the English majors’ average FLCAS score (M=78.56, SD=22.94). I conducted independent samples t-test on the FLCAS score means to examine if this difference between the English majors’

and the non-English majors’ FLCAS scores was significant. The results yielded a p value of 0.04, which was lower than alpha 0.05. Thus, the t-test results suggested that the non-English majors scored significantly higher on the FLCAS than the English majors. The descriptive statistics in Table 5 reveal that the non-English majors were even more divided on their levels of FLA than the English majors, as the SD for the non-English majors’ FLCAS scores was 25.71, as opposed to the SD of the FLCAS scores of the English majors’ 22.94. An explanation to this is that as a group the non-English majors were more heterogenous than the English majors, as they did not share the same major. Furthermore, Table 6 shows that like with the group of English majors, a majority (46.2%, N=24) of the non-English majors fell into the slightly anxious category. A total of 28.8%

(N=15) non-English majors scored an item-rating average of >3, which means that they were categorized as considerably or very anxious. The rest were categorized as non-anxious (25.0%, N=13). Thus, we can conclude that nearly one third of the studied non-English majors carried high levels of debilitating FL anxiety.

As has been established in the last two paragraphs the answer to the first research question is that the degree of FLA among the studied groups of English learners was relatively low. However, a worryingly large number of the non-English majors, nearly every third, were found to carry high levels of anxiety. In addition, both the English and the non-English majors displayed a very wide range of scores on the FLCAS: the least anxious English major scored 42 and the least anxious non-English major scored 37 on the FLCAS, whereas the most anxious English major scored 151 and the most anxious non-English major scored 148 on the FLCAS. To summarize, both groups can be described as slightly anxious but not homogenous with their degrees of FLA.

5.4 The most prominent features and sources of foreign language anxiety and the factors affecting