Tuyển tập Hội nghị Khoa học thường niên năm 2024. ISBN: 978-604-82-8175-5
559
TEST ANXIETY AMONG ENGLISH-MAJOR STUDENTS
AT THUYLOI UNIVERSITY
Nguyen Van Son
Thuyloi University, email: nvson@tlu.edu.vn
1. INTRODUCTION & RESEARCH
BACKGROUND
Test anxiety (TA) is a frequently
researched topic among educators, as TA
itself is also an issue that students regularly
face in their educational experiences. It is
defined as “the set of phenomenological,
physiological and behavioral responses that
accompany concern about possible negative
consequences or failure of an exam or a
similar evaluative situation” (Sieber, O’Neil,
& Tobias, 1977, p. 23). TA is a two-
dimensional construct including worry and
emotionality (Liebert & Morris, 1967). The
former refers to cognitive concern about the
likelihood of failure and its consequences,
whereas the latter is the physiological
adaptation entailed in states such as
nervousness and tension. These two
dimensions play important roles in designing
the inventories to investigate test anxiety
and are also employed in this study. The
literature (e.g., Balogun, Balogun, &
Onyencho, 2017; Cassady & Johnson, 2002;
Rana & Mahmood, 2010) indicates that TA
and student performance have a strong
relationship. Accordingly, there is a negative
relationship between TA and student
achievement. Academic under-achievement
has been more prevalent among high-test
anxiety students. Therefore, understanding
test anxiety from students’ perspective
would contribute to reducing negative TA
and enhancing positive performance. This
study aims to investigate TA among
English-major students at Thuyloi University
on the basis of worry, emotionality,
interference, and lack of confidence.
2. RESEARCH METHODS
Quantitative research was carried out and
survey questionnaires served as the data
collection method. Accordingly, this research
adapted the PAF Test Anxiety questionnaire
developed by Hodapp et al. (2011) including
four subscales which are worry (5 items),
lack of confidence (5 items), emotionality (5
items), and interference (5 items).
Participants needed to choose one option
from 1- Hardly ever to 4- almost always on a
Likert scale (see the items in Table 1).
111 second-year English-major students at
Thuyloi University took part in the study.
20.7% (n = 23) were male and 88 of them
(about 79.3%) were female. At the time of
research, they were going to have final exams
for many subjects.
The students completed the online Google
form questionnaire on a voluntary basis.
After one week of data collection, 111
questionnaires were completed for data
analysis. Data were analyzed after being
coded and entered into SPSS version 24, to
provide descriptive statistics for research
findings. An analysis of reliability indicated
that the value of Cronbach’s alpha was 0.947,
which was excellent, so the questionnaire
was reliable to be employed in this research.
3. RESEARCH FINDINGS
The descriptive statistics can be found in
Table 1.
