ANXIETY EXPERIENCED BY FIRST YEAR FELTE FAST-TRACK PROGRAM STUDENTS AT THE END-OF FIRST TERM SPEAKING TEST AT ULIS, VNU. =

Abstract

Test and examination has been a predominant way of evaluating students’ knowledge, skill and development for a long time. Besides bringing about the evaluative result, test also lead to test anxiety among students - a phenomenon which recently has caught the attention of many educational scientists, researchers and scholar. Test anxiety can appear in many subjects among which foreign language speaking is one of the most popular among EFL students. As one of the leading institutions in foreign language teaching and learning, the Fast-Track group at ULIS, VNU also uses test as a key tool to measure the quality of students. All students joining this group are EFL learners who are at high risk of being exposed to foreign language speaking test anxiety. In spite of this threat, the group as well as the university seems to pay no attention to the issue. As one of the first attempts to confirm the existence of speaking test anxiety for a specific group of EFL learners, namely the 1st-year FELTE Fast-track program students at ULIS, VNU, this paper aims at calculating the level of test anxiety of students to give out an reflection of the real situation related to test anxiety issue among these students. Additionally, by identifying the underneath causes of test anxiety, the paper provides several pedagogical suggestions to reduce test anxiety among students and thus, helps them to improve test performance in the future. To fully achieve these purpose, 39 first year FELTE Fast track students who had experienced their speaking test in the university in the first semester, were involved in completing the questionnaire to measure their level of test anxiety. To find out the causes of test anxiety, the interview is also employed on 9 participants. Finally, based on the reasons found out through the interviews, the researcher makes recommendation of what should be done to minimize the level of test anxiety. The findings from this research will benefit not only researchers and teachers interested in the same topic by giving thorough background information of test anxiety, but also students who need to reduce the level of their anxiety during test.