Exploring the Relationship Between Motivation and Fear of Learning English

In Malaysia, children were exposed to official English classes as young as five years old in preschools. Throughout their early childhood and early adulthood, Malaysians have studied English for at least twelve to thirteen years. The Ministry of Education has also started offering science and math subjects in English in an effort to pique students' interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines. Despite early exposure to the language for many years in school, there are still some students who claim that they lack motivation and continue to feel anxious when they are learning the language. The goals of this study are to find out how students view their motivation for learning English, how students view their fear of learning English, and whether there are any notable differences between motivation and fear of learning English across disciplines. A quantitative survey was done to pre-university students from INTEC Education College and Pusat Asasi Universiti Teknologi MARA and a total of 122 students responded. Eleven items from Gardner (2001) were used to find out motivation to learn, and 33 items from Horwitz et al. (1986) were used to measure fear of learning English. The main findings from this study is that most respondents are motivated to learn English. In terms of fear of learning English, most students responded that they were self-conscious and felt afraid of being laughed at when speaking in front of others. There was a significant difference in fear of learning English between science and engineering students. From the findings, it is suggested that educators explore different teaching and learning styles for different disciplines to assist students in learning English. Further research could be done to explore various options of assessment designs in assessing oral presentation to reduce students' anxiety in public speaking.