Oral test anxiety in school-based assessment for English among form 1 students of an urban national private school in Malaysia / Wani Nurfahani Mohd Sapuan

The study aims to determine the anxiety level of the students before, during and after the oral English test in SBA and its relationship with the students' grade for the subject. The study was conducted at an urban national private school in Kuala Lumpur. 69 Form 1 students have participated as the respondents to the survey of the study. The survey was conducted in a form of questionnaires, in which 3 sets of questionnaires were distributed before and after the oral English test. From the number, 9 students have been selected as the participants for focus group discussion. It was conducted after each session of survey to gather data related to the causes of the students' oral test anxiety in SBA for English and their perception of anxiety as a factor that affects their grades for English subject. The quantitative data were analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Descriptive analysis was run to answer the first, second and third research question of the study, whilst Spearman Correlation Test was run to answer the fourth, fifth and sixth research question of the study. As another means of data collection, the qualitative data of the study were transcribed and organized according to the constructs. The results show that the students are highly anxious before the oral English test. Then, it is slightly decreased during the oral English test before decreasing even further after the oral English test. Furthermore, it is found that the higher the students' level of anxiety before and during the oral English test, the lower their grades in SBA for English subject will be. In contrast, the result shows that there is no relationship between the students' level of anxiety after the oral English test and their grades. The qualitative data are found supporting the result. It is recommended for future studies to feature the observation method as the other method for data collection and conduct the survey to all of the students, at one time to avoid the leaking of questions.