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Anxiety experienced in communication in English can be debilitating and can influence students’ adaptation to the target environment and ultimately the achievement of their educational goals. (Woodrow, 2006, p.309)
Every country is integrating into the international community, so fluency in English communication is a great advantage nowadays. However, situational speaking anxiety can hinder students from expressing themselves explicitly. In addition, Ur (1991) showed that students still felt anxious or did not want to present their ideas when it comes to their turn to speak in front of class. Besides, there are some common problems with speaking activities such as inhibition, nothing to say, low or uneven participation, mother tongue use, lack of time for the whole class to speak. “Learners are often inhibited about saying things in a foreign language because they are worried about making mistakes, fearful of criticism or losing face, or shy of the attention that their speech attracts” Ur (1991, p. 121). These speaking -related obstacles are comparable to the realities of English-speaking skill analyzed in Truong’s article (2018) in Vietnam context. Those problems together with limited time for preparation lead to learners’ second language speaking anxiety. If learners are not willing to speak, they did not make much progress in target language acquisition (Woodrow, 2006). The students in Van Lang University (VLU) in Vietnam are in the same situation.
Together with the popularity, cost-efficiency and convenience of mobile phones/ smart phones in the contemporary society, Mobile - assisted Language Learning (MALL) has become a hot trend in foreign language teaching and learning as well as has been proved its usefulness on improving learners ‘language skills or language areas (Králová, 2016; Machmud & Abdulah, 2017). Buchegger (2010) and Yassaei (2012) added that video is also useful for teaching and learning process by creating exciting visuals and a special interactive environment in the EFL/ESL classroom, seeing language-in-use, raising cross-culture awareness, developing the power of creation, or increasing learners’ motivation. In comparison with other conventional ways of teaching speaking, smartphone video recording tool as a pedagogical tool can surmount learners ‘speaking anxiety (Machmud & Abdulah,2017).
This paper aims to investigate the benefits of mobile phone video recording function on decreasing EFL students’ English-speaking anxiety.
TopReview Of Literature
What are Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) and English Language Anxiety (ELA)?
Anxiety when associated with learning a foreign language is termed as “second/foreign language anxiety” related to the negative emotional reactions towards foreign language acquisition (Horwitz, 2001, as cited in Králová, 2016).
In the field of language teaching, various definitions of Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) have been found. Horwitz et al (1986) described language anxiety (LA) as “a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process” (p. 128). After that, they developed the term LA to FLA which consists of three kinds of anxiety: communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation.
As FLA has been studied mostly in classrooms where English was taught as a second/foreign language, the term English Learning Anxiety (ELA) is created by Papamihiel (2002) to specialize the focus on the anxiety of learners of English as a second language.