Chapter 1

THE PROBLEM AND ITS SETTING

Background of the study

Language beginners usually express anxiety, apprehension and

nervousness when gaining knowledge of a new language. Language anxiousness

can originate from learners‟ personal sense of self‟, their self-related cognitions,

language studying difficulties, differences in learners ‟and goal language cultures,

variations in social repute of the speakers and interlocutors, and from the worry of

dropping self-identity. Consideration of language learners‟ anxiousness reactions

by way of a language instructor is deemed highly important in order to help them

to attain the intended overall performance dreams in the goal language (Tanveer ,

2007). Language nervousness may additionally be a end result as well as a cause

of insufficient command of the target language (Sparks and Ganschow; noted in

Horwitz, 2001: 118). It may be experienced due to linguistic difficulties L2/FL

novices face in getting to know and the usage of the target language. Within social

contexts language nervousness may additionally be experienced due to extrinsic

motivators (Schwartz, 1972; stated in Scovel, 1991: 16), such as different social

and cultural environments, in particular the environments where L1 and L2/FL

learning takes place( Cui, Jingjing,2011).

 Philippines is a linguistically, culturally, socially and religiously diverse

country. However, it is the English language which is considered as the language

of energy and of country that has performed a main position in the lives of the

Filipinos in improving their socio-economic reputation and in achieving a good

deal higher life. In fact, it has become the lingua franca in the us of a even before

the world treated English as such due to the fact of the country’s super linguistic

variety (Wa-Mbaleka,2014b).But even if it is highly valued because of its

purposeful and sensible use in the Philippines and in many nations round the

world, learning the English language is nevertheless observed to be very difficult

on account that the method goes through complicated tasks that includes

psychological as well as social elements (Berowa, 2016). In fact, a giant quantity

of investigations in the fields of English as a Second Language (ESL) and English

as a Foreign Language (EFL) have emphasized the roles of different variables that

should facilitate or hinder language learning. It has been

stressed that affective elements like language anxiousness have an useful position

in language achievement and proficiency. Anxiety performs an vital function in the

success of gaining knowledge of or the lack of it. Over the years, language

educators have placed excellent interest in investigating language anxiousness as it

is believed to bog down gaining knowledge of (Elaldi, 2016). As claimed by

Horwitz (2001), a tremendous component of the complete population of foreign

language learners feels some stage of anxiety. This may additionally advise that
even Filipino ESL learners are now not exempted from

experiencing such anxiety.