The Relationship between Self-esteem and Second Language Anxiety among Hashemite University Students in Jordan (original) (raw)

2019, Journal of Educational & Psychological Research

Second Language Anxiety and Self-Esteem English language is an important means of communication in the world. As an international language is taught as the first foreign language in Jordan for academic, touristic and business purposes. Therefore, English language becomes an important tool for students in communicating with foreign students around the world, doing research papers and reading the academic content at the internet web. Learning English plays a central role in student`s intellectual, social and emotional development. It's a key to success in various contexts including higher education settings [3]. Self-esteem is person`s overall sense of self-worth and personal value. Self-esteem can influence life in myriad ways from academic and professional to relationships and mental health. It's correlated with achievement, good relationships and satisfaction. Increases and decreases in selfesteem bring strong emotional reactions. High self-esteem help students to view themselves as active and capable persons to promote changes through effort and set higher goals [4]. Research also indicated that high self-esteem plays an important role in academic achievement, social and personal personality [5]. Kayaoglu and Saglamed found several causes of language anxiety, they are fear of failing the exams , the fear of making lingual mistakes, shame to fail in front of others and low self-esteem [6]. The results of studies conducted by Horwitz and Le, indicate that in a variety of language learning contexts there about one third of foreign language students who experience at least moderate level of foreign language anxiety [7,8]. In studies of self-esteem and language concluded that self-esteem proves to be an important variable in second language acquisition. When self-esteem low, the psychological homeostasis is unbalanced. Creating insecurity, fear, social distance and with this we develop feelings of anxiety and stress [9]. Research has established relationship between self-esteem and language learning anxiety. It has been demonstrated that an anxiety is seen as a major threat to one`s self-esteem. Therefore, anxiety affects one`s performance in negative way. It has been proven that there is a negative correlation between language learning anxiety and selfesteem. Pattern. Found a significant negative correlation between self-esteem among the subjects of the study.