In-class and Out-of-class Anxiety when English is Used as Lingua Academia

Abstract

Little research has investigated the constructs of in-class and out-of-class language anxiety in Thai universities where English is used as a lingua academia – medium of instruction in a content class and language of communication out of class. This paper reports the level of language anxiety experienced by students enrolled in full English-medium-instruction engineering programs, establishes the relationship between and among the two anxiety constructs, year level and specific and general English language proficiency, and elicits factors of in-class and out-of-class anxiety. Descriptive statistics was used to compute the extent of anxiety engineering students experienced in and out of class. Meanwhile, correlational statistics were used to explore the relationships between and among year level, language proficiency, in-class anxiety, and out-of-class anxiety. Finally, factor analysis was used to elicit factors. Data have shown that engineering students feel anxiety when English is used both in and out of class. They feel pressured to prepare well for the English-medium class in the classroom. Outside the classroom, they feel very anxious when the interlocutor seems unwilling to communicate. In addition, some significant relationships were found between variables. Factors in in-class anxiety were fear of failure, cognitive processing anxiety, lack of preparation, lack of confidence, fear of speaking, dislike of the English-medium class, negative peer evaluation, and feeling of discomfort. Meanwhile, out-of-class anxiety has three factors, including language processing difficulty, accentedness of speech, and fear of being corrected. Pedagogical implications were discussed to help alleviate students’ feelings of anxiety in in-class and out-of-class settings.