Anxiety and Willingness to Communicate in Indonesian EFL Context
How Do They Correlate?
Yana Shanti Manipuspika
English Study Program, Universitas Brawijaya, Malang, Indonesia
Keywords: Language Anxiety, Willingness to Communicate, EFL Learners.
Abstract: This paper discussed how EFL students’ language anxiety correlates with their willingness to communicate.
It also identified the types of students’ anxiety as well as their anxiety level. Quantitative descriptive
approach was employed in the study and the freshmen of English Study Program Universitas Brawijaya
were taken as participants. The results indicated a strong positive correlation between learners’ foreign
language classroom anxiety and their willingness to communicate. The students’ types of anxiety were fear
of negative evaluation, test anxiety, and communication apprehension. In addition, students had high level
of anxiety, which makes them find difficulties in language learning process and tend to have low desire to
speak.
1 INTRODUCTION
Anxiety is one of influential factors in foreign
language learning. It has been defined as a state of
apprehension, a vague fear that is only indirectly
associated with an object (Huang, 2012). There are
three categories of anxiety, namely: trait anxiety,
state anxiety, and situation-specific anxiety
(MacIntyre and Gardner, 1994), and language
anxiety, in particular, is a form of situation-specific
anxiety. It is basically the feeling of tension and
apprehension specifically associated with second
language contexts, including speaking, listening, and
learning.
MacIntyre and Gardner (1994) found that anxiety
in interpersonal settings and associated with recall of
vocabulary and learning is communicative anxiety.
EFL learners have different levels of willingness to
communicate (WTC) due to their different
communication behaviors. Some are active
participants, whereas others tend to be passive.
Language anxiety has been considered as one of the
main barriers for WTC.
Anxiety has potential to negatively affect foreign
language learning process, since it makes learners
afraid of making mistakes in speaking, which then
leads to hesitation to communicate. By knowing the
sources of anxiety, EFL learners can handle their
fears on foreign language classroom. Teachers also
must be aware that by decreasing the anxiety of their
students, it will make the classroom becomes less-
threatening for them.
Some researchers have analyzed the relationship
between the competitiveness of learners and self-
esteem as a potential source of learner anxiety.
Bailey (1983, cited in Young, 1991) found that
anxiety might be the consequences of the
competitive nature of L2 learning, and language
tests and learners’ perceived relationship with their
teachers. This was supported by Young (1991) who
revealed that six potential causes of language
anxiety are involved in students’ language learning,
which include personal and interpersonal, learner
beliefs about language learning, instructor beliefs
about language teaching, instructor-learner
interactions, classroom procedures and language
tests.
This paper tries to figure out the correlation in
another EFL context, which is Indonesian. It tries to
identify students’ anxiety and elaborate on the
relationship between language anxiety and
willingness to communicate in EFL contexts as
Indonesian, specifically in Faculty of Cultural
Studies, Universitas Brawijaya. In addition, this
paper also discussed the types of anxiety perceived
by the students of English Study Program
Universitas Brawijaya, as well as their anxiety level.
406
Manipuspika, Y.
Anxiety and Willingness to Communicate in Indonesian EFL Context - How Do They Correlate?.
DOI: 10.5220/0007168104060409
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 406-409
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Anxiety
Horwitz et.al (1986) state that anxiety is subjective
feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness, and
wrong associates with an arousal of the autonomic
nervous. It means that when learners are trying to
explore their language, there is a feeling, known as
anxiety, which makes them not confident in doing it.
Sometimes, that feeling affects their readiness to
speak up, even make them doing some mistakes in
grammar, spelling, and pronouncing some English
words.
Foreign language anxiety may not be easily
detected and it can affect the goal of learning
language. This feeling is very common for EFL
learners since it affects communicative aspects of
language learning, such as listening and speaking
(MacIntyre and Gardner, 1994, p.283). Liu (2007)
conducted a study showing that Chinese students
experience anxiety when they have a single
performance such as a presentation in English class.
It causes the students have lack of vocabulary, low
English proficiency, and have memory
disassociation.
However, anxiety that is experienced by EFL
learners might be different from one another,
depending also on the situation. According to
Horwitz et al (1986), there are three kinds of foreign
language anxiety namely communicative
apprehension, test anxiety, and negative evaluation.
With regard to the level of anxiety, according to
Horwitz et.al (1986), there are three categories: low,
moderate, and high level of anxiety. These levels of
anxiety can be indicated by knowing the result of
Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale
(FLCAS) score. The score of FLCAS ranges from
33 to 165. The students whose score is lower than 99
are categorized as having low anxiety level, while
the students who get higher score than 99 are
categorized as having high level anxiety. However,
if the score is exactly 99, they are categorized as cut-
off line, which means they have moderate level of
anxiety.
2.2 Willingness to Communicate
Willingness to communicate is defined as a stable
predisposition toward communication when free to
choose to do so. It means that a person who is
willing to communicate tends to have no obstacle in
doing so. The proper objective to learn second
language is to create willingness to communicate.
Higher willingness to communicate among learners
provides more opportunities to practice in second
language and facilitate authentic second language
usage (MacIntyre et al, 2001).
There are some variables that lead to different
level of willingness to communicate (McCroskey,
1992). Those are introversion, self-esteem,
communication competence, cultural diversity, and
communication apprehension.
There are different levels of willingness to
communicate based on what context and with whom
they communicate. In order to identify it, the
appropriate instrument is by using Willingness to
Communicate (WTC) Scale proposed by McCroskey
(1992). The WTC scale includes items related to
four communication contexts which are public
speaking, talking in meetings, talking in small
group, and talking in interpersonal conversation, and
also three types of receivers which are strangers,
acquaintance, and friends.
3 METHODS
3.1 Design
This is a correlational study using quantitative
approach since the analysis used statistical method.
3.2 Participants
The participants in this study were the students of
English Study Program Universitas Brawijaya. The
first-year students (of academic year 2016/2017) as
many as 98 were taken as population based on
preliminary assumption that they have higher level
of anxiety (nervousness) compared to the second or
third year students since they are starting their
university study.
3.3 Instrument
Two questionnaires were employed in this study,
namely Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale
(FLCAS) and Willingness to Communicate (WTC)
Scale.
Foreign Language Learning Anxiety Scale
(FLCAS) is “a self-report measure which assesses
the degree of anxiety, as evidenced by negative
performance expectancies and social comparisons,
psycho-physiological symptoms, and avoidance
behaviour (Horwitz et al, 1986). It is the most
commonly used tool for assessing Foreign Language
Anxiety. This instrument is composed of 33 items,
Anxiety and Willingness to Communicate in Indonesian EFL Context - How Do They Correlate?
407

each of which is answered on the five-point Likert
scale, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly
agree (values 1–5). The items 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 18, 22,
28, 32 were negative, so the score was reversely
computed.
The second questionnaire, Willingness to
Communicate (WTC) Scale by McCroskey (1992)
measures a person’s willingness to initiate
communication. For the scoring, it has specific guide
to compute the total WTC score, by adding the sub
scores for stranger, acquaintance, and friend. Then
divide by 3. All scores, total and sub-scores, will fall
in the range of 0 to 100. The Total WTC :
>82 High Overall WTC, <52 Low Overall WTC
3.4 Data Collection
In collecting the data, first, the FLCAS and WTC
scale were distributed to the students. Beforehand,
the students were given instructions and were asked
to faithfully answer the questionnaires. And then, the
questionnaires were collected, and the participants
were informed that the result of the questionnaire
would be kept and used for research purpose.
3.5 Data Analysis
The first step of data analysis was inputting the data
gathered from FLCAS and WTC Scale, then finding
the result of students’ type of anxiety. Following
that, the anxiety level of students was measured. The
next step was calculating the correlation between
students’ anxiety and their willingness to
communicate using SPSS 20, and interpreting the
results based on Pearson’s correlation.
4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The 98 students of the first year in English Study
Program Universitas Brawijaya Malang as the
participants showed the following results (see Table
1) concerning their types of anxiety.
Table 1: Ranks of anxiety types.
Category Mean score Ran
k
Fear of Ne
g
ative Evaluation 3.28 1
Communication
Apprehension
3.21 2
Test Anxiety 3.10 3
It is displayed in table 1 that fear of negative
evaluation was the most frequent type of anxiety
experienced by the participants. Meanwhile,
communication apprehension takes the second place
and test anxiety ranked the third. The anxiety level
of the participants was 104.74 indicating high level
of anxiety. The correlation between students’
anxiety and willingness to communicate was
measured by using Pearson Product Moment
Coefficient Correlation, and the analysis used SPSS
20 software. The following data were then obtained.
Based on the analysis, the correlation value was
0.653 indicating that foreign language anxiety and
willingness to communicate has high correlation. p
value 0.00 shows that there is a positive correlation
between the variables. In other words, H0 is rejected
and it reflects that there is a correlation between
foreign language anxiety and willingness to
communicate.
As can be seen from Table 1, in types of anxiety,
fear of negative evaluation ranks the first, followed
by communication apprehension and test anxiety.
However, there is only slight difference between
fear of negative evaluation and communication
apprehension. This means that both types of anxiety
really affect the respondents. This might be
influenced by the position of the respondents who
are the first-year students who are still hesitant to
speak and communicate in English language and
afraid if they are judged by others.
Test anxiety ranked the lowest in anxiety types,
which indicated that the respondents also had burden
in facing academic test. Usually learners who have
this anxiety assume that no matter how hard they
prepare for the test, it will not make them succeed in
it. This feeling can make learners nervous in doing
the test. As a consequence, learners may not focus
and it can be a reason of failure in the test. From the
finding, item 10 which states “I worry about the
consequences of failing my foreign language
classes” got the highest score.
Regarding the anxiety level of the participants, it
was revealed that the mean score was 104.74 which
indicate that the freshmen in English Study Program
Universitas Brawijaya had high level anxiety. This is
derived from Horwitz’ statement that the score under
99 is indicated as low anxiety, the 99 score means
moderate level, while high anxiety is indicated by
having more than 99 score.
From the statistical analysis, it was evident that
there was a positive correlation between foreign
language anxiety and willingness to communicate of
the students of English Study Program Universitas
Brawijaya. It was indicated by the p value
(significance value) of 0.00 which means that the
correlation between two variables is significant. The
coefficient correlation r was 0.653 which reflects
strong correlation (Evans, 1996).
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
408

The results show that if the language anxiety is
high, learners are less willing to communicate in the
L2 and if their anxiety decreases, their willingness to
communicate increases. This finding is supported by
McCroskey and Richmond’s (1990) statement that
willingness to communicate has tendency affected
by individuals’ anxiety. When learners are able to
speak in the classroom, it means they have ability to
raise their confidence and do not feel intimidated by
peers or teachers’ judgments.
Willingness to Communicate (WTC) scale
includes items related to three types of receivers and
types of communication context. Types of receiver
refers to whom a person willing to communicate,
comprising friends, acquaintances, and strangers.
There are also four communication context types,
which are speaking in public, talking in meetings,
talking in small groups, and having interpersonal
conversation. In receiver type, the participants
showed having more willingness to communicate
with friends (74.48 – moderate level) and followed
by acquaintances (56.02 – low) and strangers (42.08
– moderate).
In context type, the respondents had more
willingness to communicate in group discussion,
meeting, and public speaking, which were all
categorized into moderate level of WTC.
Interpersonal communication showed a low level of
WTC.
The result of this paper is in line with
Murtiningsih’s study showing that anxiety and
willingness to communicate is closely related. The
high anxiety owned by the participants affects their
desire to speak. It is necessary for the respondents to
increase their willingness to speak because the
categories among three receiver types are not at high
level. As English program students, having
willingness to communicate with people around
them is crucial.
5 CONCLUSIONS
This paper discussed the relationship between EFL
students’ language anxiety and their willingness to
communicate. The results indicated a strong positive
correlation between learners’ foreign language
classroom anxiety and their willingness to
communicate. This means that learners who were
more anxious about language classroom tended to be
more apprehensive about communicating in the L2.
Previous studies had also confirmed this study’s
finding that the participants’ unwillingness to
communicate and their foreign language anxiety
were significantly correlated to their English
language proficiency.
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