Given its emergence only 20 years ago, it is rather remarkable that research on English as a lingua franca (ELF) has progressed to the extent that a large handbook – over 600 pages, with 47 chapter...

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The Routledge handbook of English as a lingua franca

The purpose of this paper is to study the level of anxiety among Yarmouk University students in Jordan/Irbid and to investigate if there are any statistically significant differences in anxiety level attributed to gender. The sample of the study consisted of 280 students (150 females and 130 males) who were enrolled in English Language service courses Eng 99, Eng 101 in the second semester 2016/2017. The researcher adopted a scale to collect data and to achieve the goals of the study. The instrument had 33 items on required multiple choice answers with a five-point Likert scale. The results show that the participants generally had a feeling of anxiety in learning English. They experienced Test Anxiety and Fear of Negative Evaluation. Moreover, the results show that there are statistically significant differences in anxiety level attributed to gender in favor of male students. The researcher recommends conducting further studies that focus on developing anxiety free classroom environment during teaching English as a foreign or second language.

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Students’ Level of Anxiety Towards Learning English as a Foreign Language: Students’ Perspectives

This study investigates elementary school students’ anxiety over learning English, the influential factors of their anxiety, and the teacher’s strategies to reduce their anxiety. Anchored in a mixed research method, 75 fifth grade students at SDIT Robbi Rodhiyah in Curup, Bengkulu, Indonesia were involved as the sample for quantitative investigations into their learning anxiety levels and the influential factors of their anxiety. In addition, one English teacher was recruited as the qualitative subject to be interviewed on the teacher’s strategies to reduce students’ anxiety. The quantitative investigations deployed the FLCAS questionnaire developed by Horwitz, and the qualitative investigation conducted interviews with the English teacher. Descriptive statistics were employed to analyze questionnaire data, and an interactive model was undertaken to analyze interview data. The results revealed that the students were at a high level of English learning anxiety. Their anxiety stemmed from some factors such as anxiety over tests, fear of negative evaluation, and communication apprehension. In efforts to help students cope with and reduce their English learning anxiety, the teacher applied some strategies such as relaxation, music and laughter, self-encouragement, and additional considerations resting upon students’ to help them reduce their anxiety.

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EFL Islamic Elementary Students’ Anxiety in Learning English

Students’ problems in using English to communicate need to be handled seriously. Teaching English is no more teaching the knowledge of English only but also the use of context. This library research elaborates on the importance of pragmatics for EFL students to improve their communication skills in various contexts of interaction and to strengthen the importance of pragmatic competence for non-native English teachers in teaching natural English communication. Documentation is the collecting technique using a checklist and fieldnote instruments. The primary sources are theories about pragmatics and teaching communication from books and published journals. In order to obtain correct and precise results in analyzing data, a content analysis technique is used. The data analysis procedure covers determining the design, which is linkage analysis, finding main data, and theories about pragmatics from books, then finding contextual knowledge from published research related to pragmatics and teaching English communication, and finally, writing and interpreting the linkage to describe the results. The findings show that pragmatics should not limitedly act as classroom instructions but as competence to be constantly developed and practised for students or teachers. Pragmatics should be seen from its whole aspect in order to communicate naturally and contextually. It can also be concluded that opportunities for pragmatic practice should be provided to achieve the goal of teaching English, that is, the ability to use English in various contexts of interaction.

Leffi Noviyenti

Papers

EFL Islamic Elementary Students’ Anxiety in Learning English

Understanding Pragmatics as a Way to Practice Natural Communication Skills in Various Contexts of Interactions