FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM ANXIETY OF SAUDI SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS: THE EFFECT OF GENDER

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate foreign language anxiety level and the factors affecting language anxiety among Saudi senior secondary school students, and to explore the impact of gender in the unique context of Saudi Arabia, which allows for a “single-sex” schools programme (segregated education system). The Arabic Foreign Language Anxiety Questionnaire (AFLAQ, Al-Saraj 2011;2014), was administered online to 84 secondary school students (28 male and 56 female). Subsequently, six of the participants - three female and three male each one represents a level of anxiety (i.e. a high, moderate and low levels of foreign language anxiety) to further investigate their reported causes of anxiety and to further examine whether gender plays a role in this. The results revealed that Saudi senior secondary school students had moderate levels of anxiety. The study identified five major factors that trigger FLA among Saudi secondary school students respectively as the following: expressing oneself, the large number of English grammar rules given in the class, giving presentations in front of the class, the low language competence, perfectionism and speaking in front of native speakers. Finally, gender did not have a significant impact on foreign language anxiety in the current study, this might be attributed to the cultural context of Saudi.