INVESTIGATING NON-MAJORED ENGLISH LEARNERS' FEARS AFFECTING THEIR COGNITIVE COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING: A CASE STUDY AT UNIVERSITY OF PHAN THIET

Tóm tắt

Emotional aspects as a phenominon of psycholinguistic aspect including fear now a significant hot issue in English language teaching with non-English-majored students in higher education which is continuously discussed so far. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between students’ fears and their proficiency in learning English. Specifically, it analyzes how perceived stress, foreign language anxiety, depression, and cognitive skills are interconnected among non-English major students at the University of Phan Thiet. Data were collected through a questionnaire distributed to 100 non-English-major students at the university. SPSS software was utilized to identify any statistically significant connections among the variables. The analysis primarily involved descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation, and regression analysis. The results indicated a notable negative correlation between fear- related emotional factors and cognitive competence, ranging from moderate to strong in intensity.Among the three predictors, stress had the strongest predictive effect, as higher stress was associated with a 29.3% decrease in cognitive competence, followed by depression at 28.0% and anxiety at 19.6%. Together, the three emotional factors explained 43.5% of the variability in cognitive competence. This means that the greater the emotional burden non-English-majored students experience, the lower cognitive competence they may demonstrate in English language learning. The best strategies suggested to reduce learners’ emotional burden are that teachers should create a supportive classroom environment, reduce unnecessary emotional pressure, and establish a good rapport with students.