Investigating The Relationship Between Foreign Language Anxiety In The Four Skills and Year of Study Among Yemeni University EFL Learners

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between foreign language anxiety and the year of study among Yemeni university EFL learners. The data were collected from the English language students from years 1 to 4 of the Faculty of Arts, Ibb University, Yemen. The data were collected using Foreign Language Anxiety Scale (FLAS) which measures the level of anxiety in the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. The data were analysed using SPSS version 22 and one-way Anova is used to determine if there is a significant difference in the level of anxiety between the students in the four years. The results revealed that second year students experienced the highest level of anxiety followed by third year, fourth year and the first year students experienced the least level of anxiety. However, no significance difference was found between the level of foreign language anxiety and the year of study. The study concluded that two other factors, the interference of the mother tongue and novelty effect, might have affected the relationship between language anxiety and year of study. Implications of the study are also discussed.


INTRODUCTION
The psychological factors affecting foreign language learning are still attracting the attention of the scholars and researchers (Brown 2007).Anxiety was regarded as a general term until the work of Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope (1986) which discussed foreign language anxiety as a distinguishing psychological phenomenon experienced by all foreign language learners regardless of age, gender or experience.
Anxiety is one of the cognitive factors that has a strong negative influence on the process of language learning (Kralova, Skorvagova, Tirpakova & Markechova 2017) as such cognitive feeling can hamper the performance of the learners.MacIntyre and Dewaele (2014) stated that language anxiety has an influence on language acquisition, retention, and production; therefore, foreign language anxiety has a negative influence on the whole process of language learning.This attracted many researchers to investigate this issue and its effect on the process of language learning (Aida 1994;Horwitz et al. 1986, Horwitz & Young 1991, Ezzi 2012, Taha & Wong 2016, Kralova et al. 2017).
Anxiety is still one of the negative psychological effects that might hinder learners from achieving the task of mastering a foreign language (Park & French 2013, Zhou 2016) which can be a destructive in some cases (Reid 1999).Ezzi (2012) pointed out that there are many factors that increase the level of anxiety such as insufficient vocabulary, weak grammar, and fear of negative evaluation from teachers and other classmates.Horwitz et al. (1986) argued that communication apprehension, fear of negative evaluation and test cause anxiety in the classroom.They added that the learner's low self-esteem also creates language anxiety.In addition, erroneous beliefs can contribute to raising the level of anxiety among learners (Young 1991) as the students will eventually find a gap between their expectations and their real performance (Ohata 2005).Another factor that increases the level of anxiety is worrying about consequences and forgetting things (Alsowat 2016).
The relationship between foreign language anxiety and year of study is a controversial matter if we take into consideration the studies which have been published in different parts of the world.Some studies had revealed that the year of study do not have any influence on the level of anxiety (Anyadubalu 2010).However, there are other studies that have suggested how the year of study are related to the students' experience and this has a positive influence on the level of anxiety as advanced students experience lower level of anxiety than beginner students (Trang et al. 2013).Ekstrom ( 2013) is also with the opinion that the progress in the level of studying a foreign language will not help the learners to alleviate the level of anxiety since it is a characteristic of foreign language learning.Shaboul et al. (2013) stated that the studies which have investigated the issue of anxiety among Arab studies are scarce and there is a need for further investigation.A study by Taha and Wong (2016) investigated on the effect of language anxiety on the academic achievement among Iraqi students and Alsowat (2016) investigated the sources of anxiety and its effect on academic achievement among Saudi students while Norizan, Amr, and Nor Rizan (2017) investigated the effect of foreign language anxiety on gender and academic achievement among Yemeni university EFL students.In Yemen, Ezzi (2012) investigated the issue of anxiety and its impact on gender.Accordingly, the issue of anxiety is still worth investigating in Yemen as it needs attention from the sides of the researchers.More importantly, the conflicting points of view concerning the relationship between the year of study and the level of anxiety needs to be investigated in order to highlight the factors that might influence the relationship between these two variables.
The number of Yemeni students studying English as a foreign language is increasing every year.There are many problems the students encounter and one of those problems is foreign language anxiety (Ezzi 2012).This issue has not received enough attention from the researchers in Yemen especially the variables associated with anxiety like the year of study.This study attempts to bridge this gap and highlight the factors underlying the relationship between anxiety and the year of study in the context of Yemen.This will help the teachers and the students to get a better understanding of the anxiety phenomenon in order to find practical academic solutions which might help to alleviate the level of anxiety among students in Yemen, taking into consideration that the level of anxiety is different from one environment to another as is stated by Loo and Kitjaroonchai (2015).

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
The research aims to investigate foreign language anxiety among Yemeni EFL students at Ibb University and its effect on gender, academic achievement and the year of study.However, this study will focus on the relationship between foreign language anxiety and the year of study.Therefore, it aims to answer the following question; what is the relationship between foreign language anxiety and the year of study among Yemeni University EFL learners?

LITERATURE REVIEW FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANXIETY
Anxiety is a common issue as students of foreign language cannot evade such feeling and Horwitz et al. (1986), Macintyre and Gardner (1994), Pappamihiel (2002), Batumlu & Erden (2007), Na (2007), Cui (2011), Arnaiz & Guillén (2012) and Lee (2016) have investigated this phenomenon among students in different parts of the world.Horwitz et al. (1986) found that language anxiety is a distinctive feeling which differs from other types of anxiety like learning anxiety because students of foreign language cannot escape such feeling during the process of learning.
The study of Macintyre and Gardner (1994) too found that the students of French language experienced anxiety and they tend to underestimate their skills.The feeling of anxiousness prevents the students from showing their true potentials or expressing their ideas.The same result is obtained by Pappamihiel (2002) who investigated the issue of anxiety among immigrant middle school Mexican students in the US.Na's (2007) study which was focused among Chinese high school students also found that the students experienced anxiety and this feeling is irrelevant to gender and the level of study.The three previously mentioned studies are conducted with students studying in different levels of study and the results have shown that the students cannot evade language anxiety.
As a technique for resisting the feeling of anxiety, the students tend to stay silent and avoid any kind of interactions with the teachers and with other students.These students prefer to stay quiet and would only listen without participating in any kind of interaction inside the classroom (Macintyre & Gardner 1994, Pappamihiel 2002).The students would also try to avoid any task of learning as a mechanism to lower the level of anxiety (Na 2007).
Foreign language anxiety has a negative effect on the academic achievement of students and this was proven through a study by Batumlu and Erden (2007).The study found that students who experienced high level of anxiety got low marks while students who experienced low level of anxiety get high marks.In addition, Na (2007) and Cui (2011) study showed a negative relationship between the level of anxiety and learning English as a foreign language.
A study by Ayden (2008) which investigated the causes of language anxiety and fear of negative evaluation in Turkish students shows that there is a negative effect.The students mentioned that the fear of being evaluated negatively by others contribute to their feeling of anxiety.The same result is obtained by Williams and Andrade (2008) where Japanese students of English language attributed their feeling of anxiety to being evaluated by their classmates and teachers.Andrade et al. (2009) conducted an experimental study in which the level of anxiety among Japanese students inside the classroom was investigated.The students were exposed to a situation which provokes anxiety during English and the result of the study revealed that about 75% of the students were affected by anxiety.
Arnaiz and Guillén ( 2012) is another study that investigated the relationship between foreign language anxiety and other factors like gender in a Spanish university.The result shows that females experienced a higher level of anxiety than males.The study also found that low level students tend to be more anxious inside the classroom.
Furthermore, there are studies that investigated the strategies used by students to lower the level of anxiety like the study by Lucas et al. (2011).The participants were students of English language in Philippine and results showed that the students depend on vocabulary as it helps them to express their ideas and this is the first strategy used by students to avoid the feeling of anxiety.In addition, the study of Lee (2016) shifted the focus to the teachers and investigated the effect of corrective feedback on the level of anxiety.The study showed that corrective feedback is a good method to lower the level of anxiety if used properly.Moreover, Chan, Abdullah and Yusof (2012) argued that anxiety can be a booster or demotivator for students and it is the role of the teacher to help students take advantage from such feelings during their study because anxiety is one of the factors that determine the success of language learning.
To sum up, foreign language anxiety is experienced by students in middle school, high school or even at the university level and foreign language anxiety has a negative effect on students' performance and their academic achievement.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANXIETY AND LEVEL OF STUDY
Many studies investigated the relationship between anxiety and level of study, and some of them found that the level of study does not influence anxiety like Cheng's (2002) study while other studies, like Elkhafaifi (2005) found that the level of anxiety is different among advanced and beginner learners.Cheng's (2002) study concentrated on writing and its relationship with foreign language anxiety.The result of the study showed that there is no significant difference in the level of anxiety among juniors, sophomores, and freshmen.He argued that the students are aware of language learning in all the levels of study which keeps them from evading the feeling of anxiety even if they are in the advanced levels.However, the study of Elkhafaifi (2005) showed that the beginners experienced a higher level of anxiety than the advanced students, and he concluded that the students gain experience with the passage of time during the process of learning a foreign language which reduces the level of anxiety.
Apart from that, some studies showed that the level of anxiety increases when the students move to higher levels (Samimy & Tabuse 1992, Saito et al. 1996).Samimy and Tabuse (1992) revealed that the level of anxiety among students increases as they move from one level to another.The researchers found that anxious students avoid taking risk to communicate with other students using Japanese language which means that they become less motivated and less positive.In addition, Saito et al. (1996) showed that advanced students experienced the highest level of anxiety while beginners and intermediate students came after that respectively.The researchers argued that this is due to the change in the curriculum as the subjects in the advanced levels concentrate more on reading and less instructional time is given to the students.Ezzi (2012) conducted a study in Hodeidah University.The participants in this study were second year and fourth year EFL students.The results of the study revealed that students in year two experienced higher level of anxiety than year four but the difference between the two groups is not significant.Loo and Kitjaroonchai (2015) conducted a study among Thai high school students and one of the aims of the study was to investigate the relationship between foreign language anxiety and the year of study.The results showed that there is a weak positive correlation between foreign language anxiety and year of study.However, they concluded that the feeling of anxiety is different from one environment to another assuring readers that the results of the other studies were different because of different settings.
The study of Cheng (2002) and Ezzi (2012) revealed that there is no significant difference between the students when the year of study is taken into consideration.On the contrary, the study of Loo and Kitjaroonchai (2015) showed that there is a weak positive relationship between anxiety and year of study.Also, Elkhafaifi (2005) showed that the level of anxiety is different from one level to another.Therefore, the relationship between foreign language anxiety and year of study is a controversial matter and there are external factors that have an influence on this issue which needs further investigation in different settings (Kitjaroonchai 2015).

METHODOLOGY RESEARCH SETTING
Learning in Yemen is divided into two stages; the first stage is the basic learning which starts from the first grade to the ninth grade, and the second stage is the secondary stage which starts from the tenth grade to the twelfth grade.The students start to study English from the seventh grade until the twelfth grade.The curriculum for English language in schools is prepared by the UK government, and it aims to provide Yemeni students with the basic skills of English language.
English at the university level in Yemen is taught in almost all of the universities.The number of the Yemeni students who joined English departments every year is huge in comparison to other majors.For example, the number of the seats which are allotted to the students in English Department, Faculty of Arts, Ibb University is 250 seats for the academic year 2017/2018.At least 120 students registered to study English language at Faculty of Education.This shows that there is a great interest among Yemeni students to study English language.
The Department of English in Faculty of Arts, Ibb University gives a general specialisation as the students study courses in linguistics and literature.The students who graduate from English Department, Ibb University have the choice to study linguistics or literature in their higher studies because they have studied courses related to both majors.This is not only in Ibb University but in other universities in Yemen as well.
The process of teaching in Yemeni universities is still traditional as most of the lecturers use the teacher-centred approach.The teacher does everything inside the classroom and the students do not have enough chances to participate.This makes the process of teaching in Yemeni universities very theoretical to a great extent and the students are passive participants most of the time.This does not help students to improve their skills especially in their communication skills.Therefore, the concentration on the factors that affect language learning among the students like anxiety is important in order to provide practical solutions that might help the students to overcome such language inhibitors.

RESEARCH DESIGN
This study is a quantitative study and a questionnaire was used to collect data.Quantitative approach is a suitable method for the study since it helped to get objective data for the issue under investigation (Ebel 1980).

SAMPLING
The population in this study are Yemeni students of English, Faculty of Arts, Ibb University, Yemen.The samples are selected from the four levels depending on stratified sampling as the students were divided into four groups: freshmen in first year, sophomore in second year, juniors in third year, and seniors in fourth year.20% of the number of participants has been taken from each level, and this percentage is considered sufficient in quantitative data analysis according to Singh (2006).The population of the study is shown in  The number of the students who participated in this study is 20% of the overall number of the students as it is shown in the

INSTRUMENT
There are many scales that have been developed to investigate anxiety among second and foreign language learners.However, there is no scale that can be used to investigate anxiety in the four skills.This study developed a scale to investigate the general level of anxiety in the four skills.This scale has fused three scales with some modifications.The scales which are adapted are Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) by Horwitz et al. (1986), Foreign Language Reading Anxiety (FLRA) developed by Saito et al. (1999) and Foreign Language Writing Anxiety Inventory (FLWAI) developed by Cheng (2004).The items that have been adopted from FLCAS are speaking anxiety which includes two factors, namely communication apprehension and fear of negative evaluation, and listening anxiety which includes communication apprehension.Moreover, FLRA has been adopted and the factors of reading anxiety include unfamiliar script and writing system, unfamiliar cultural materials, and personal factors.In terms of writing anxiety, the items adopted from FLWAI included three factors namely cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety, and avoidance behaviour.Only items related to speaking and listening have been adopted from FLCAS, and all the items of FLRA have been adopted without any modification.In terms of writing anxiety, the researchers selected the items which fall directly to cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety, and avoidance behaviour according to the explanation of Cheng (2004).
Therefore, this study used Foreign Language Anxiety Scale (FLAS) which aims to investigate the level of anxiety in the four skills through 48 items (see Appendix 1).The items have been revised by two ELT experts and their comments were taken into consideration.Moreover, the questionnaire was piloted on 40 students to measure its reliability, and Cronbach's Alpha reliability of the whole scale is .807which shows that the internal consistency of the items is very good.The reliability of the items taken from FLCAS, FLRA, and FLWAI has also been checked, and Cronbach's Alpha analysis showed that the items taken from these scales scored .901,941 and 909 respectively.Figure 1 shows the scale that has been developed for the study.

RESULTS
In order to find if there is a significant difference in the level of foreign language anxiety among Yemeni university EFL learners with respect to the year of study, the researchers calculated the means and standard deviations of the students of each year included in the samples.Table 3 clarifies the means, standard deviations and number of the sample in each group.After that, one-way ANOVA is used to compare between the mean scores of the four years in terms of the level of foreign language anxiety.Table 4 clarifies the Sum of Squares, mean square, F-value and the significance level of the differences between the four years.Table 4 shows that the calculated F-value is 1.959 and it is not significant at 0.05.From the above mentioned results of one-way ANOVA, it is inferred that the differences in the level of foreign language anxiety among Yemeni university EFL learners with respect to the year of study was not significant between the four groups.

DISCUSSION
The study aims to investigate the relationship between level of anxiety and year of study.The result of one-way ANOVA analysis revealed that the difference between the students when the year of study is taken into consideration is not significant.When taking the mean score of the students in each year, it is clear that that the mean score of the students in first year is (131) (2.73) the lowest mean and this might be due to the fact that the students in first year studied some subjects in Arabic language such as Islamic culture, Arabic language and Microsoft windows.Teachers who teach subjects such as reading, writing, spoken and grammar might have use Arabic language from time to time since the students might not understand everything if the teacher speaks English all the time.Furthermore, the level of anxiety in second year is (144) (3.00), the level of anxiety in third year is (140) (2.91), and the level of anxiety in fourth year is (136) (2.83).It is clear that there is a decline in the level of anxiety from second year to fourth year.This decline might be due to the fact that students start to study subjects in linguistics and literature starting from second year such as Introduction to Linguistics and they would have also come across literature subjects.But, all the subjects in third year and fourth year are categorised under linguistics and literature, which are specialisation subjects.The students in second year might experience the highest level of anxiety since they come across subjects in linguistics and literature for the first time but the feeling of anxiety is reduced in third year and it is reduced more in the fourth year since the students have adapted and become familiar with linguistics and literature topics.Therefore, novelty effect is considered one of the reasons that raise the level of anxiety among Yemeni EFL students at Ibb University.Experience helped to alleviate the level of anxiety and this is clear from the decline of the level of anxiety starting from the second year onwards.
Locally, Ezzi (2012) conducted her study among Yemeni university students in Hodeidah University.The study revealed that there is no significant difference between level two and level four in terms of the level of anxiety.The difference between Ezzi (2012) and this study is that the first study only compared between second year and fourth year students while this study investigated anxiety in the four years which enables the researchers to discuss the factors behind the relationship between anxiety and year of study.
The relationship between the level of anxiety and the year of study is a controversial matter.Dewaele et al. (2008) revealed that the level of anxiety declines with the passage of time as students become more experienced in English language.Other studies like Kitano (2001) argued that when the students become more experienced in English language, they become more aware of L2 which raises the level of anxiety.Thus, the students who move to upper levels become aware of the language's correct forms such as the grammatical structure and pronunciation which keeps them anxious during the process of learning.Some studies have revealed that there is no relationship between level of anxiety and the year of study which supports the result of this study such as Capan et al. (2012) in Turkey and Rezazadeh and Tavakoli (2009) in Iran.
In this study and the previously mentioned studies, the results show that there is no relationship between the level of foreign language anxiety and the year of study and the reason might be due to the novelty effect (Rezazadeh & Tavakoli 2009).Thus, when the students move from one year to another, they come across new courses in which they would study new topics and this creates some challenges for the students.The challenges which students encounter every year keeps them associated with anxiety which might decrease slightly but the difference is not significance from one year to another.The interference of mother tongue might also alleviate the level of anxiety and this is clear from the level of anxiety in first year as they study different courses in Arabic language.Accordingly, although years of study help to alleviate the level of anxiety, the relationship between the level of anxiety and the year of study is affected by different factors such novelty effect and the interference of mother tongue.

CONCLUSION
This study investigated the relationship between foreign language anxiety and year of study among Yemeni university EFL learners at English Department, Ibb University, Yemen.The result of the study revealed that first year students experienced the lowest level of anxiety then followed by year four, year three and year two respectively.However, the difference between the students in terms of year of the study is not significant which confirms the findings of the study conducted by Ezzi (2012).However, this study covered students from all four years in English department which gives the researchers a better understanding of the relationship between the level of anxiety and the year of study.It can be inferred from the results that the interference of the mother tongue in first year reduced level of anxiety among student while the level of anxiety declines from second year to third year and fourth year because the students have become more experienced in the language although the anxiety is still experienced by the students due to novelty effect.

IMPLICATIONS
The result of the study leads to theoretical and practical implications.Generally speaking, the differences between the students in terms of the year of study was not found and this might be due to novelty effect as the students come across new subjects every year which keeps the students moving in the circle of education without being able to overcome foreign language anxiety (Rezazadeh & Tavakoli 2009).Thus, Yemeni university EFL students start to study subjects in linguistics and literature from second year onwards which shows that they come across new subjects that they are not familiar with.When studying these courses, Yemeni students do not only receive knowledge in language but also knowledge that will make the process of learning complicated and in turn raises the level of anxiety.As the students become more familiar with linguistics and literature subjects in their third and fourth year, the level of anxiety declines.
Another theoretical implication is that the courses taught in the mother tongue influence the level of anxiety as deduced from the level of anxiety of first year.Thus, students in first year are still freshmen in the field of English language.Even though they have not mastered English language, they experienced the lowest level of anxiety among the four groups.Teachers should realise that students in first year might experience lower level of anxiety since they study different subjects such Arabic language, computer courses and Islamic culture in their mother tongue; the Arabic language.
In terms of practical implications, the teacher-centred teaching approach does not help the students to participate and improve their experience in order to overcome the feeling of anxiety inside the classroom as the students tend be passive participants most of the time (Bose 2002, Al-Tamimi & Attamimi 2014).Teachers can try different teaching methods which will make the process of learning student-centred.Communicative Teaching Approach, collaborative learning and Cooperative Learning would engage the students in the atmosphere of the learning and encourage active participation in the process of language learning.Such approaches and strategies might help the students to practice which in turn will eventually help to reduce the level of anxiety.
There is a lack of use of technology in Yemeni universities such as CALL in teaching reading skills as well as the other skills.It is important for Yemeni universities to utilize technology in the process of language teaching as technology proved to be an effective method in lowering anxiety level amongst students (White 2014).

APPENDIX A
Foreign Language Anxiety Scale Directions: Statements 1 through 48 refers to how you feel about English when you read, write, or communicate with others.For each statement, please indicate whether you (1) strongly disagree, (2) disagree, (3) neither agree nor disagree, (4) agree, or (5) strongly agree by marking the appropriate number on the line following each statement.Please give your first reaction to each statement and mark one answer for each statement.SD = Strongly Disagree, D = Disagree, N = Neutral, A = Agree, SA = Strongly Agree

FIGURE 1 .
FIGURE 1. Foreign Language Anxiety Scale developed for the study

TABLE 1 .
Number of Students in English Department, Ibb University, Yemen

Table 2 below : TABLE 2 .
Number of the Samples in the Study

TABLE 3 .
Means, Standard Deviations, and Number of the Sample in Each Year

TABLE 4 .
Sum of Squares, Mean Square, F-Value and the Significance Level of the Differences Between the Four Years

Items are positive so the marks should be reversed
*These