Speaking and Writing Anxiety and Efficacy Beliefs of ESL Students in Spoken and Written Discourse

Abstract

Students pay importance to their self-efficacy beliefs as an indicator of their language performance. Yet, if students experience trouble in learning and mastering the target language, anxiety is provoked. This study intends to prove and measure the relatedness of speaking and writing achievement to speaking and writing self-efficacy as well as speaking and writing anxiety among selected senior high students in ESL classrooms. It follows a survey-correlational design and adapts the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) and Second Language Writing Anxiety Test (SLWAT) as the data gathering tools. Results of descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation, and Factorial MANOVA show that considering the grades, low speaking anxiety is equivalent to low writing anxiety, and high speaking anxiety leads to no significant difference in the writing anxiety of the students. General findings indicate that the speaking and writing anxiety levels of the respondents affect their communicative performance. The study recommends to language teachers the need to re-visit the way they promote the use of the English language as confidence boosters and efficacy builders. This is to inspire students to be more communicatively competent and confident in their strategies to become better language learners.