An Exploratory Investigation on Foreign Language Anxiety among English for Islamic Education Learners in Brunei Darussalam

Abstract

Amidst the global demand for learning English, a proliferation of scholarship continues to highlight learner difficulties and anxiety to master English as a second/foreign language, particularly in classroom settings. This study is significant as it is the first empirical study on foreign language anxiety (FLA) in a Malay-Islamic higher education teacher training setting that is concerned with formal Islamic edification in Brunei Darussalam. By utilising the FLA theoretical framework by Horwitz et al. (1986) and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), this study found that the general observation on FLCAS among Islamic trainee teachers at-tending English for Islamic Education as part of English for Specific Purposes module does not show a clear indication of FLA. However, further analysis shows that Test Anxiety and General Anxiety in classrooms have contributed to high levels of FLA among these learners. Our study also proposes some pedagogical and research implications that can be applied in other contexts sharing similar tradition and cultural settings in language education, and as part of comparative and transnational studies across the globe.