The effect of test-

anxiety on EFL entrants’

written performance at
ESI
Prego Garcia, Maria
Levio, Andrea
 ANXIETY

 It’s the subjective feeling of tension,

apprehension and nervousness that
may arise due to particular
situations, e.g. an exam situation

 It involves several variables such as

self-esteem, competitiveness, etc.
 LANGUAGE ANXIETY

 It refers to the apprehension

experienced when a situation
requires the use of a second
language at which the individuals
are not fully proficient.
 “Language anxiety can interfere
with the acquisition, retention
and production of a new
language.”

McIntyre and Gardner (1991)

 TEST-ANXIETY
 A subcategory of language anxiety

 It involves a feeling of uneasiness

while taking exams.

 Several factors affect test-anxiety,

for example, students’ beliefs
 BELIEFS

 “they are systems of

related ideas that are
accepted without
questioning and tend to be
held tenaciously”
(Wenden, 1999)
THE STUDY
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
 What are students’ beliefs and
attitudes towards written tests
(compositions)?

 How does test-anxiety affect

written performance on first-year
students at Escuela Superior de
Idiomas (ESI) in General Roca,
Argentina?
 SUBJECTS
 Entrants of English I at ESI from the
year 2008.
 Traits:
 all native speakers of Spanish
 an average age of 21
 They will receive 9 hours of formal
instruction per week
 DESIGN

We will deal with only one

affective variable: anxiety.
Consequently, we will adopt
an analytic-inductive
perspective.
 DATA COLLECTION
PROCEDURE

 Diagnostic Tests
 Compositions
 Two questionnaires
 A Post-test interview
 Diagnostic Tests
 Purpose: to determine students’
levels of proficiency

 We will resort to the scores

obtained in the diagnostic tests
which will be provided by the
teachers of English I
 Compositions
 We will use in-class compositions and the
two term tests as another source of
documentary evidence.
 We will implement the use of this
documentary evidence to find traces of
sts’ beliefs.
 We will compare them with the second
questionnarie to determine the sts’
levels of anxiety.
 Questionnaries
 Questionnaire Nº 1
 Purpose: to have a glance at students’
beliefs towards writing.
 It will be administered during the first week
of the academic year
 Questionnaire Nº 2
 Purpose: to get a panorama of students’
perceptions and feelings when facing a test.
 It will be administered two weeks before
carrying out the first term exam
 Post-test Interview
 It will be carried out right after the
mid-term exam since anxiety is at
its highest point.

 It will be compared with the results

of the compositions to decipher the
interdependence between test-
anxiety and achievement.
 DATA ANALYSIS
 Diagnostic tests
 We will adopt the following criteria
to group the students:
Mark (x/100) Quality of
performance
 From 1 to 45 Low
 From 46 to 79 Average
 From 80 to 100 High
 Questionnaires:
 We will carry out a basic
statistical analysis to find
similarities to establish
patterns

 The information will be shown

in a pie chart.
Compositions

 Compositions will be classified into

three categories:
 High performance (1 serious mistake)
 Average performance (2 serious
mistakes)
 Low performance (more than 3 serious
mistakes)
 Post-test interview
 We will carry out a qualitative analysis
II. It will complement the questionnaire
about anxiety to delineate sts’ levels of
anxiety
III. We will compare sts’ degree of anxiety
with their written results. This will
enable us to answer our second research
question
IV. We will juxtapose this interview and the
questionnaire on beliefs to find recurrent
patterns.
 ANTICIPATED
OUTCOMES
1º RESEARCH QUESTION:

 Time as a negative variable in test-

situations.
 Fear of others’ evaluations, especially
teachers’ judgments.
 Writing as a skill that doesn’t seem to
present difficulties.
 Writing as only a process that implies
translation of Spanish thoughts into
English.
 Writing as a process of summarizing
other people’s ideas.
 2º RESEARCH QUESTION

 We will probably find a negative

correlation between test-anxiety and
learners’ written scores

 We may suggest that test-anxiety

plays a negative role when writing
compositions in a test situation.