A study of classroom activities and language anxiety between high and low academic performance teacher students at Rajabhat Universities

Abstract

The purposes of this study were: 1) to investigate classroom activities (CA) experienced by high and low academic performance teacher students in the language classroom, and used by them in the practicing process of teaching, 2) to explore the level of language anxiety in the high and low academic performance groups before employing CA in their practicing process of teaching, 3) to investigate the level of language anxiety in the high and low academic performance groups after employing CA in their practicing process of teaching, 4) to compare levels of 1) language anxiety in the two groups of teacher students before employing CA in the practicing process of teaching and 2) language anxiety in the two groups of teacher students after employing CA in the practicing process of teaching, and 5) to find the relationship between CA and language anxiety among RU teacher students. In this study, the sample was 186 teacher students majoring in English at four Rajabhat universities. The subjects were selected by simple random sampling. The teacher students were classified as high and low academic performance by their grade point averages (GPA). Data collection in this study consisted of a CA questionnaire and the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS). The particular questionnaire was both valid and reliable with a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.95. The major results show that 1) all types of CA, especially participation mode activities, were often experienced in English class and used in the practicing process of teaching by both high and low academic performance teacher students. 2) The two groups of teacher students had high levels of language anxiety before employing CA in their practicing process of teaching. 3) High and low academic performance groups had high levels of language anxiety after employing CA in their practicing process of teaching. 4) There was no statistically significant difference in language anxiety between high and low academic performance groups however, the low academic performance;