Relationships between students' anxiety in foreign language learning and communicative language ability in higher education context.

Abstract

The study explores undergraduate biotechnology students' levels of foreign language anxiety, their levels of communicative language ability in English as a foreign language, and the relationships between these phenomena. Three instruments were used in the study - the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale, the Communicative Language Ability Scale, and a speaking assignment. The measures of internal consistency, inter-rater reliability, descriptive statistics, and Pearson correlation analysis were used for data processing. The study showed that the students' levels of foreign language anxiety are at a medium level. Also, the levels of communicative language ability and its competences are at an intermediate level. The obtained results indicate that the students' foreign language anxiety levels are related to their communicative language ability levels. Moderate correlations are recorded - the lower the levels of foreign language anxieties, the higher the levels of communicative language ability are, and vice versa.