Anxiety and Beliefs about English Language Learning: A Research on Gender
Abstract
This study aimed to investigate gender differences among engineering students in anxiety and beliefs about English Language Learning at Mehran UET, Pakistan. The triangulation research design was employed to address research question and objective. The respondents (N=221) including 105 female and 116 male voluntarily participated and provided their responses on FLCAS and BALLI items. The semi-structured interviews were conducted to provide in-depth understanding of anxiety and beliefs as multi-faceted dimensions of emotions about language learning in a classroom. t-test was computed to check gender differences in anxiety and language beliefs of engineering students. The interview responses of the participants confirmed and corroborated the descriptive results. Quantitatively, the findings of the study indicated no gender differences in students’ foreign language anxiety and language beliefs. Qualitatively, a semi structured interview data also supported the descriptive results. Through these results, this research discovers that anxiety and beliefs are significantly associated with leaners’ foreign language learning. The current study on gender differences in terms of anxiety and beliefs confirmed previous studies and contributed convincingly in the exiting literature on anxiety and beliefs.
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