FACTORS CAUSING AND STRATEGIES TO SOLVE STUDENTS’

ANXIETY IN THE ENGLISH TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESS

(A Case Study At The Seventh Grade PK of MTs N 02 Sukoharjo
Academic Year 2019/2020)

Ismei Alfiah Puji Astuti

ismeialfiah@gmail.com
Sabariyanto, M.Pd
sabariyantosangdwija@gmail.com

The State Islamic Institute of Surakarta

Abstract : This research is aimed to describe the factors causing students’

anxiety in the English teaching-learning process at the seventh grade PK of MTs
N 02 Sukoharjo academic year 2019/2020. The objective of this research are (1)
to find out the factors or sources of students’ anxiety in English teaching-learning
process, (2) to find out the students’ strategies to solve their anxiety in English
teaching-learning process.
This research used mixed methods. The subject of this research was 43 students of
the seventh grade PK of MTs N 02 Sukoharjo. The data collected from
questionnaire of foreign language class anxiety scale (FLCAS) adapted from
Horwitz (1986) to determine the factors causing students’ anxiety and the level of
students’ anxiety in the English teaching-learning process. The researcher
collected the data via Google forms, and interview via Voice Note on WhatsApp
to determine the strategies to solve their anxiety. The data which have been
collected are analyzed by using theory of source anxiety and strategy to solve the
anxiety.
The result of the research showed that the students of the seventh grade PK have
some factors in anxiety, they are personal and interpersonal anxieties, learners’
beliefs about language anxiety, instructors’ beliefs about language teaching,
instructor-learners interaction, classroom procedures, and language testing. The
most dominant factors of students’ anxiety in seventh grade PK of MTs N 02
Sukoharjo 2019/2020 is personal and interpersonal anxieties. The researcher also
found some strategies that were used by students in solving anxiety in English
teaching-learning process, those are: preparation, positive thinking, relaxation,
and peer seeking.
Keywords: Anxiety, Teaching and Learning Process

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INTRODUCTION
Emotions are important in the classroom since it has impact on
learning. The influence learners’ ability to process information and to
accurately understand that they encounter. Emotions have the potential to
energize students’ thinking and also have the potential to interfere with
learning. Negative emotions such as, anger, anxiety, and sadness have the
potential to distract students’ learning efforts.
Based on the pre research conducted by the researcher on
November 7 - 8 2019 in VII grade PK 2 and VII PK 3 MTs N 02
Sukoharjo in English teaching-learning process, the researcher found
students who looked anxious during the English teaching-learning process.
The researcher saw many symptoms of anxiety during the teaching-
learning process, such as: nervousness, jittery, keep silence when asked by
the teacher, shy when speaking in front of their friends, even students do
not to answer the question from teacher when they are asked. So that,
student’s looked passive during teaching-learning process, especially in
English lesson.
After the researcher interviewed the students who were
experiencing anxiety, it turned out that students were embarrassed and
afraid of making mistakes when they asked by the teacher to come in front
of the class to answer the questions. Moreover, some of these students also
admitted that they lacked preparation and lacked of confidence in English
lessons. So, they preferred to be quiet and sit passively. According to
them, English is one of the lessons that is difficult to understand, because
many of them do not understand and master vocabulary in English.
Thus, anxiety can be factor that affects the students in their English
teaching-learning process. Students’ anxiety is a real problem that majority
of students face in learning English as a foreign language. Horwitz (1986)
cited in Brown (2001) stated that some learners claim to have a mental
block against anxiety when they come to learn to speak a second or

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foreign language. Anxiety makes students have less confidence, stress, and
nervousness as well as having difficulty concentrating, becoming
forgetful, sweating, and having palpitation. They can obstruct their
learning process. Based on Spielberger (1972:486) anxiety as an
unpleasant emotional state or condition which is characterized by
subjective feelings of tension, apprehension, nervousness, and worry. It
means, this happens when someone is experiencing an unpleasant
condition, for example at school when English teaching-learning process.
According to the researcher, if this conditions continues it will
disrupt the teaching-learning process, especially in English lessons.
Students become passive and classroom conditions are not conducive if
many students do not respond the teacher’s question. Even, the teachers
have difficulty in communicating with students. Because, many students
are keep silent and bow their heads when asked by the teacher. Even
though, English lesson is one of the important lessons and must be learned
by junior high school students. Teaching English in Indonesia has been
part of the Indonesian government policy and teaching English for junior
high school student has been included in the national curriculum. As we
know, English is one of the subject become as a national examination in
Junior High School students. In learning English, there are four basic skills
that student should master, they are speaking, listening, reading, and
writing.
English is very important as a media of communication in several
activities, such as teaching and learning many activities, international
conference, and particular conversation with foreigners. Crystal (1997)
states that English is the language that has spread throughout the world
most extensively and is dominating in a number of important fields
including of important fields including international commerce, education,
and communication. English is used in fields such as politics, culture, art,
trading, education, and business. In this globalization era, there is a global
competition in the world in those fields. Ability to communicate in English

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 as the international language is prominent. Indonesia needs to improve its
human resources with sufficient skills and abilities including English
speaking skill to enable them to communicate with people worldwide.
Therefore, mastering English is very important for Indonesian people in
order to improve their competitiveness nowadays.
In this research, the researcher choose two classes of seventh PK
class in MTs N 02 Sukoharjo in academic year of 2018/2019, they are PK
2 and PK 3 class. Because in VII PK 2 and VII PK 3 have a high level of
anxiety. It was evident that they look anxious when they are in English
subject, especially when they have task to speak in front of the class when
English teaching-learning process. There are a lot of reasons why they get
anxiety in English language. Considering that, the researcher is interested
in conducting the research about students’ anxiety in English teaching-
learning process. The researcher wants to know the factors causing of
students’ anxiety in English teaching-learning process and the solution to
solve the problems from the anxiety. From the background above, the
researcher decides to conduct a research entitled “Factors Causing and
Strategies to Solve Students’ Anxiety in the English Teaching-Learning
Process at Seventh Grade PK Students of MTs N 02 Sukoharjo Academic
year 2019/2020”.

THEORETICAL REVIEW

Teaching-Learning Process

According to Brown (2000:7) teaching means guiding and

facilitating learning, enabling the learner to learn, setting the conditions of
learning.

While, according Schunk (2012:5) learning is lasting change in

behavior, or the capacity to behave in a certain way, resulting from
practice or other forms of experience.

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 From the definition above, it can be concluded that teaching and
learning are two inseparable things. Therefore, in the English teaching
learning process there should be a good relationship between the teacher
and the students, both have a role as the subject of the teaching-learning
process.

Anxiety

According to Doubek & Anders (2013) Anxiety can be defined as

a mental and physical state characterized by specific emotional, physical,
cognitive and behavioral symptoms. The symptoms that can be seen if
someone experiences anxiety for example, nervous, worry, and confused.

Based on Spielberger (1972:486) anxiety as an unpleasant emotional

state or condition which is characterized by subjective feelings of
tension, apprehension, nervousness, and worry. It means, this happens
when someone is experiencing an unpleasant condition, for example at
school when English teaching-learning process.
From the definitions explained above, it can be concluded that
anxiety is a normal feeling of human of being jittery, nervous, afraid, and
worry in our mind when we are faced to something or we are in an
unpleasant situation that we think it is uncomfortable with us.

Source of anxiety

Kota Ohata (2005) state that language anxiety can arise from:

1. Personal and interpersonal anxieties

Commonly personal and interpersonal are most source of

anxiety, it was investigated in correlation with other social and
psychological constructs. For example, people with low self-esteem
may worry what their friends think, they are afraid to get a negative
response, result or evaluation.

2. Learners’ beliefs about language learning

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 Horwitz (1986:127) learners’ beliefs about language learning
also contribute to the student’s tension and frustration in the class.

3. Instructors’ beliefs about language teaching

The researcher gives an example, when a teacher believes
that his role in class is to constantly correct students’ errors. Some of
the students might become quite anxious about their class
performance.
4. Instructor-learners interaction

The process of interaction between the instructor (teacher)

and learner (student) is regarded as factor causing anxiety for the
students. If the learner does not understand the teacher’s corrections
or explanation, this can be a cause for anxiety.

5. Classroom procedures

Those studies that investigated anxieties in relation to

instructor-learner interactions show that students are more concerned
about how their mistakes are corrected rather than whether error
correction should be administrated in class. In addition, some of the
classroom activities in oral presentations in front of the class are also
causes as potential sources of anxiety Ohata (2005).

6. Language testing

Language testing is one of the factor which contribute the

anxiety to the students. It would lead to other psychological stresses,
such as the fear of losing self-confidence or feeling inferior to others.
In addition, sometimes students felt pressured to think that they had
to organize their ideas in a short period of time while caring about
grammar errors at the same time.

Students’ strategies for reducing anxiety

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 Kondo and Ling (2004:262) write in academic journal about
strategies for coping with language anxiety, such as:

a. Preparation
Preparation is the key to feeling confident about giving a speech or
presentation in front of class. So, preparation can improve students’
proficiency of the language helping them in decreasing anxiety.
b. Relaxation
Relaxation is characterized by its affective quality in that it aims at
alleviating bodily tension associated with emotional arousal.
Relaxation is one the best way to help students to coping with worry
and anxiety in the classroom.
c. Positive thinking
Positive thinking is characterized by its palliative function of
suppressing problematic cognitive processes that underlie students’
anxiety. Positive thinking is one of strategies to reduce students’
anxiety. It can be useful, especially for dealing with state anxiety
which refers to students’ anxiety because of a specific evaluative
situation, a test or competition, an oral performance.
d. Peer seeking
Peer seeking is distinguished by students’ willingness to look for
other students who have the same trouble in understanding in class
and controlling their anxiety. For the anxious students, the realization
that others are having the same problem may serve as a source or
reduce their burden because they have friends to sharing.
e. Resignation
Resignation is characterized by students’ reluctance to do anything
to alleviate their language anxiety. Students reporting examples of
resignation seem intent on minimizing the impact of anxiety by

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 refusing to face the problem. Some of the actions are giving up,
sleeping in the class.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The research design that used is qualitative research design in the

form of mixed method. According to Creswell (2013:32) mixed method is an
approach to inquiry combine two research method, qualitative and
quantitative to collect data, integrate the two forms data using distinct designs
that may involve philosophical assumptions and theoretical frameworks. The
researcher used mixed methods research combining qualitative data and
quantitative data as well. Qualitative method in this research dominated the
research methodology, because the researcher used interview as instrument
data collection, and the data was changed into transcript, typically
characteristic of qualitative method. This research also used questionnaire as
the instrument data collection, and the data was changed into numbers, as the
result typically characteristic of quantitative method. This was needed to
provide complete research and valid finding result. In this research, the
researcher is focusing on factors causing students’ anxiety and their strategies
that used to solve their anxiety in English teaching-learning process at
seventh grade PK students of MTs N 02 Sukoharjo academic year 2019/2020.
To obtain the data, the researcher used two kinds of techniques of
collecting the data, those are: questionnaire and interview. The researcher
used closed questionnaire. The questionnaire was adapted from Foreign
Language Classroom Anxiety Scale as suggested by Horwitz (1986). The
score of questionnaire used Likert scale that was categorized into strongly
agree (SA), agree (A), neutral (N) disagree (D), and strongly disagree (SD).
The questionnaire consisted of two kinds of which are positive and negative
statement. The positive statement scale ranged from 1-5 with answer

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 “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree”. While, the negative statement was
ranging from 5-1 with answer “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree”. The
researcher used interview to support the questionnaire. By using interview the
researcher could get deeper information from the students about their anxiety
in English lesson. In this research, the researcher interviewed twenty students
of two classes.
This study used the Miles and Huberman (1994) as the method of data
analysis. Miles and Huberman (1984) cited in Sugiyono suggest that
qualitative data analysis consist of four procedures; data collection, data
reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification.

From those types of triangulation, the researcher used theoretical

triangulation to get validity of data. So, the researcher compares the data
finding with the perspective theory that is relevant. The researcher is demand
to have expert judgment to compare the finding of research with certain
theory.

DISCUSSIONS

1. The Factors Causing Students Anxiety’ In the English Teaching-

Learning Process.

Based on the research findings of this thesis, the researcher found that
most of the seventh grade PK students of MTs N 02 Sukoharjo felt
anxious when English teaching-learning process. The result of the
questionnaire showed that the most of students were anxious when English
teaching-learning process. The source were personal and interpersonal
anxieties, learners’ beliefs about language learning, instructors’ beliefs
about language teaching, instructor-learners interaction, classroom
procedures, and language testing.

The first factor that contribute students’ anxiety in English teaching-

learning process was personal and interpersonal anxieties. The example of
personal and interpersonal anxieties such as, low self-esteem, low

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competitiveness, afraid to get a negative response or evaluation. Low self-
esteem and low competitiveness can be characterized as follows, feel panic
when English teaching-learning without preparation, embarrasses to be
volunteer to answer question from teacher, they assume that other students
are better than themselves, feel more tense and nervous in English class,
and afraid that other students will laugh at themselves.

The second factors that learners’ beliefs about language learning. This
factor contain some factors come from the students about English learning.
Some of it, the worries about wrong in pronunciation, grammar,
vocabulary, fluency, and other factor in English learning that make them
worried.

The third factors that instructors’ beliefs about language teaching.

Based on interview, students admitted that they did not understand the
explanation from the teacher because the teacher explains it so quickly.

The fourth factors that instructor-learners interaction. Based on

interview by the researcher such as, the students get nervous when they
does not understand every words the teacher says and the students would
be nervous when speaking with native speaker.

The fifth factors that classroom procedures. Based on the interview by

the researcher such as, the students feel tremble when they going to be
called by teacher to answer the question in front of class, the students
worry about the consequences of failing in their English class, the students
afraid that their teacher is ready to correct every mistake they make, and
they get upset when they are do not understand what the teacher is
correcting.

The sixth factors that language testing. Based on the interview by the
researcher such as, the students usually case during test in English class,
panic when speak English without preparation, and nervous when the
teacher asks questions which have not prepared by students.

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 Based on 33 items of statements in FLCAS questionnaire, there were
varieties of responses from the all respondents. The researcher found out
that, there were 43 students who had different levels of anxiety in the
English teaching-learning process. There were 8 students who experience
“Very Anxious” level, and the range score for “Very Anxious” level
started from 124-165. There were 30 students are in “Anxious” level, it
means a half of the respondents are in range score 108-123 and there were
5 students that had “Mildly Anxious” level, and the range score of this
level is started from 87-107. The researcher found that there were no
respondents who are in “Relaxed” and “Very Relaxed” level in this
research.

2. The Students’ Strategies To Solve Their Anxiety

Based on theory from Kondo & Ling (2004) there are five strategies
that can used by students to solve the students’ anxiety, they are:
preparation, relaxation, positive thinking, peer seeking, and resignation.
But, the researcher only found some strategies to solve the student’s
anxiety, such as:
The first solution was preparation. Based on the interview, most of the
students’ strategies in solving their anxiety in seventh grade PK students
of MTs N 02 Sukoharjo tried to increase confidence by using preparation
before English teaching-learning process started. The students said that by
preparing the material and studying the lesson, they can reduce their
anxious in English teaching-learning process. They were afraid if they did
not prepare the material, they could not understand the explanation from
the teacher and afraid if they get bad score in English class.
The second solutions was positive thinking. Based on the interview,
the students admitted that positive thinking is important and necessary.
Because positive thinking can reduce panic and nervousness during
English teaching-learning process. Besides, if we are afraid and nervous, it
will not make us focus on the teacher’s explanation.

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 The third solutions was relaxation. The researcher also found that
students used relaxation as an anxiety solving strategy. By using it, the
students could kept control their feeling of frightened.
The last solutions was peer seeking. Based on the interview, the
students answered that they were looking for another students that could
help them to prepare the material. The students may find a suitable
learning partner to practice or build a small-scale support group with
others who experience the same thing. This strategy was a good solution,
especially if the students could share their experiences and strategies with
their learning partner.

CONCLUSION

Based on the data analysis and the result of this research, it can be

concuded as followed:

1. The researcher was conducted by giving questionnaire for students

to collect data. The questionnaire was consisted of statement of
students’ anxiety in English teaching-learning process. The
questionnaire was adapted from Horwitz and Cope (1986). After
analyzing the data, the showed that most of the students admitted
that they were getting anxious in English teaching-learning
process. Based on the result in chapter four, the researcher can
conclude that most students of seventh grade PK students of MTs
02 Sukoharjo in the academic year 2019/2020 still feel anxious in
English teaching-learning process. The factors of students’ anxiety
in the seventh grade PK students of MTs N 02 Sukoharjo in
academic year 2019/2020 Based on questionnaire and interview are
personal and interpersonal anxieties, learners’ beliefs about
language learning, learners’ beliefs about language teaching,
instructor-learners interaction, classroom procedures, and language
testing. It was seen from the total of students’ response in every

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 statement in the questionnaire. The factors of the anxiety can
influence their achievement in English teaching-learning process.
In the other hand, the result of this research show that most of the
students are in “Anxious” level. There are 8 students who
experience “Very Anxious” level and 5 students are in “Mildly
Anxious” level. There were no respondents who are in “Relaxed”
and “Very Relaxed” level in this research.
2. Based on interview, those are: preparation, positive thinking,
relaxation, and peer seeking. The most dominant strategies used by
the students to solve their anxiety in English teaching-learning
process by positive thinking. Some of the students combine it with
other strategies.

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