Factors in Becoming an Emotionally Positive English User in University Freshman Classes

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Introduction
College English education in Japan has recently been striving to improve productive (speaking and writing) and receptive (listening and reading) skills simultaneously by changing from a teacher-led instruction system to a student-centered language-learning system.In order to encourage students to participate actively in such lessons and to ultimately obtain higher scores indicating increased English proficiency, it is important to implement classes that take the students' emotional and psychological factors into account.Some of the existing research has shown that improving students' language proficiency depends heavily on decreasing the learners' anxiety and increasing their enjoyment, motivation, and self-confidence when using the language.

The Communicative Approach
English education in Japan is undergoing a reform process to improve students' communication skills (Nishino & Watanabe, 2008), and teachers and students at many universities are required to use only English in communicative lessons (Rivers, 2011).Although most Japanese university students have experienced more than six years of compulsory English education in junior-high and high school, most are unable to engage in fundamental English communication (Wicking, 2016); that is, new problems have emerged in tandem with the promising changes.In an English as a foreign language (EFL) environment in which people can learn the language without having to listen to or speak it, many learners who are not used to communicative English are quite reluctant to accept the English-only instruction policy (Wicking, 2016).(Dordinejad & Ahmadabad, 2014;Krashen, 1981;MacIntyre & Gardner, 1994;Ohata, 2005).Piniel and Csizer (2013) echoed Krashen's (1981) opinions, and stated that debilitating anxiety may have a negative effect on learning a language; therefore, reducing the level of anxiety could have a positive effect on the learning process.As lower levels of anxiety, greater self-confidence, and higher motivation can be linked to successful second language acquisition (SLA; Krashen, 1982), creating a classroom atmosphere that can decrease the affective filter and provide students with optimal input should be a pedagogical goal that can be achieved by implementing a more natural approach (Krashen & Terrell, 1983).Krashen's (1982) hypothesis had a strong impact on communicative teaching approaches by redirecting attention to the affective variables in second/foreign language (L2/FL) learning and teaching (Spielmann & Radnofsky, 2001).

Students' Emotions
Anxiety can have a negative impact on students' motivation to acquire a TL (Phillips, 1992;Zhang, 2019).Decreasing students' levels of anxiety may be effective in terms of increasing their motivation to learn a language and improving their self-confidence (Yan & Horwitz, 2008).In addition, high levels of anxiety are associated with the fear of being evaluated negatively, the fear of speaking in public, and test anxiety; thus, these factors are related to lower self-rated English proficiency (that is, self-confidence; Liu & Jackson, 2008).Piniel and Csizer (2013) also found that less motivation and stronger anxiety were related to lower levels of self-confidence.FL learners all need a certain amount of self-confidence, particularly when speaking in a TL.The learners become more aware of their own performances when they are on display in speaking classes, and often feel inferior when they compare themselves to their peers (Kitano, 2001).In order to overcome this and to improve their English skills, students need to practice speaking, which increases their self-confidence (Carless, 2008).
By planning low-risk activities in which students can use the TL frequently, teachers can increase their students' confidence, maintain their motivation to and interest in learning English at high levels, and decrease their anxiety (Dewaele, Petrides, & Furnham, 2008;Liu & Jackson, 2008).This view was partly supported by van Batenburg et al. (2019), who reported that students' achievements in oral interactions in EFL situations that included strategically directed instruction could be predicted based on the increase in their self-confidence.
SLA studies have mainly examined negative emotions, such as FLCA.However, as a new approach, some researchers have recently begun to include positive emotions, such as foreign language enjoyment (FLE) (MacIntyre & Mercer, 2014).Learning a language should lead to the learners' positive wellbeing; in positive language education, teachers need to focus on the emotions of the language learners and assist them to acquire an L2 in an enjoyable and humanistic way (Mercer, MacIntyre, Gregersen, & Talbot, 2018).Jin, Dewaele, and MacIntyre (2021) reported that learners who reminisced about their language achievements and recalled their progress had reduced levels of FLCA.The authors attributed this to the fact that the learners were able to experience the positive emotions of personal growth and self-actualization; thus, enjoyment might have been correlated positively with the improvements in the students' English skills.MacIntyre, Gregersen, and Mercer (2019) found that students' confidence and motivation increased and their anxiety decreased when they enjoyed learning a TL, which ultimately improved their TL proficiency.Moreover, Saito, Dewaele, Abe, and In'nami (2018) concluded that the regular and frequent use of a TL while experiencing pleasant emotions could promote SLA, reduce anxiety, and improve the overall performance in the TL.Thus, enjoyable lessons have the benefit of decreasing the students' anxiety and improving their English proficiency.With regard to the methodology that was adopted for the analysis of the qualitative findings, the following categories for coding were based on factors that were identified by previous researchers: autonomy (Najeeb, 2013), the zone of proximal development (ZPD; Vygotsky, 1978), FLE (MacIntyre & Mercer, 2014), FLCA (Horwitz et al., 1986), proficiency development (Saito et al., 2018), motivation (Taguchi et al., 2009), self-confidence (Piniel & Csizer, 2013), and individual differences (Oxford & Ehrman, 1992).

A Student-centered Language-learning Environment
In order for students to improve their English proficiency, they need to practice speaking English in class, although classroom-based language learning can also cause them to experience higher levels of anxiety.Therefore, teachers should encourage students to interact in pair/group activities in an enjoyable environment (Liu & Jackson, 2008).Teachers also should explore different ways of creating a student-centered environment to increase their students' language awareness and motivation (Piechurska-Kuciel, 2011), as well as to increase their self-confidence (Bai, Chao, & Wang, 2019).Anton and DiCamilla (1999) supported Vygotsky's (1978) ZPD: Students externalize their inner speech as a cognitive tool to solve problems, scaffold their interactions with one another, and to create shared perspectives to define tasks through collaboration among classmates.This is also in line with Wells (1999), who stated that some interactions that were necessary for learning could be created using the ZPD, which provides students with a variety of learning opportunities regardless of their knowledge, and opens up new avenues for learning.Other researchers have also embraced the ZPD theory, and have stated that students needed to be more helpful toward each other (Dörnyei, 1997) and exchange ideas reciprocally in order to increase group-framed motivation (Murphey, Falout, Fukuda, & Fukada, 2014).In addition, peer interaction is beneficial for language learning (Chen, 2018;Crawford, McDonough, & Brun-Merser, 2019), and language learning involves a transformative process in which other learners may play an important role (Thomas & Rose, 2019).Furthermore, if these strategies do not work, teachers should change them, be flexible when catering to the students' needs, and should create a comfortable classroom environment (Bailey, 1983).Murphey (2013) proposed that students' ZPDs needed to match a teacher's zone of proximal adjustment (ZPA); that is, the teachers' ability to adjust to different student's levels and abilities in order for students to be challenged to learn without experiencing undue stress.Accordingly, the present study addressed the following research question: What are the emotional and psychological factor(s) that could be associated with students' achievements (higher TOEIC IP scores) in student-centered, communicative English classrooms at a Japanese university?

Ethical Consideration
This study was conducted after approval was obtained from the ethics committee of a university in Japan.Written informed consent was received from all the participants.The participants were informed that their anonymity was guaranteed, and that they were able to ask questions about the questionnaire and to withdraw from the study at any time.

Setting
The course that was investigated was a required English class for freshmen that focused on the development of the students' communicative skills, writing, and reading.The Japanese researcher, a bilingual Japanese/English instructor, taught four classes (each class consisted of 25 to 30 students) in English, and used the data from these classes for the present study.The textbook, the lesson plans, the homework, and the tests were the same in all the classes.The teacher introduced the concept of a student-centered language-learning system, including pair/group work, to the students during the lessons in the first classes.Moreover, a point-addition system was introduced: When the teacher asked the students a question about the content of a textbook, the students were encouraged to raise their hands to reply, and the teacher selected a student to answer.If the answer was correct, the student was awarded a point.Thus, the aim was to encourage the students to participate actively in the lessons by earning points as if they were playing a game.The university's English program adopted an English-only policy that both the teachers and the students were required to follow.Therefore, the students agreed that Japanese should be avoided; however, many of the students could not adhere strictly to this rule.The duration of each class was 100 minutes, and the teacher taught one unit per week.
The students learned English using the textbook that was prescribed for the course; the textbook contained practice in vocabulary, reading comprehension, and instruction about how to write essays.Each unit in the textbook contained an article consisting of approximately 500 words.Prior to the class, the students were required to read the article, to complete the vocabulary exercises and the comprehension questions in the textbook, and to answer other reading comprehension questions based on the same article.During the lessons, in order to practice speaking, the students checked the answers and discussed why they had opted for particular answers in groups; they then had open discussions about the answers with the entire class.The students were also taught in how to write an essay, and practiced writing essays.The students were required to write an in-class essay report on the last day of the course, and to take The Test of English for International Communications for Institutional Program (TOEIC IP) a week after the course concluded.The purpose of the essay report was for the students to practice writing an academic essay based on what they had learned.The objective of the TOEIC IP was to measure each students' English proficiency.
The quantitative data were collected via questionnaires, while the qualitative data were obtained from the essay reports that the students wrote.

Questionnaire
The quantitative survey focused on the students' emotions (FLE/FLCA), as well as on psychological factors (motivation and self-confidence) to investigate the relationships among the factors that affected the students' achievements in terms of English proficiency.The questionnaire consisted of five items pertaining to background information, eight items concerning FLE, eight items regarding FLCA, six items linked to motivation, and four items related to self-confidence.The five background information items were the students' identification numbers, genders, ages, nationality, and the languages that the students understood (L1-L3).The levels of enjoyment and anxiety were assessed using a questionnaire adapted from the questionnaire compiled by Dewaele, Witney, Saito, and Dewaele (2018).The eight items pertaining to FLE were taken from an enjoyment questionnaire (Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014), and included three dimensions of FLE: social versus private, peer-controlled versus teacher-controlled, and the positive atmosphere in an FL classroom.The eight items concerning FLCA were drawn from an anxiety scale (Horwitz, Horwitz & Cope, 1986), and included three dimensions of FLCA: anxiety, insufficient confidence, and nervousness.
In addition, the levels of motivation and self-confidence were assessed using a questionnaire adapted from the questionnaires compiled by Taguchi, Magid and Papi (2009) and by Matsunuma (2006), respectively.The six items concerning motivation included six dimensions of motivation, namely attitudes toward learning English, criterion measures, the ought-to L2 self, the ideal L2 self, prevention-focused instrumentality, and promotion-focused instrumentality.The four items of self-confidence referred to the extent to which the students felt confident about learning the English language (see the appendix).
A five-point Likert scale that ranged from strongly agree = 5, agree = 4, neither agree nor disagree = 3, disagree = 2, to strongly disagree = 1 was used; higher total scores indicated higher levels in each category.The wording for the eight items that assessed enjoyment and anxiety was reversed to ensure that the participants did not detect the purpose of the study, and that they had completed the task correctly.The eight reverse-worded items were adjusted when recorded in an Excel file.

Data Collection and the Analysis of the Questionnaire
The questionnaire in this study was distributed shortly before the end of class time in the seventh of fourteen class periods of the semester.The students were asked about their feelings and experiences from the beginning of the class up to that point (approximately two months), and completed the survey within about 10 minutes.The reason for using an in-person survey was to maximize the response rate.A multiple linear regression analysis was calculated to predict the factor(s) that could have affected the students' TOEIC IP scores (a dependent variable) based on the following independent variables: the levels of enjoyment, anxiety, motivation, and self-confidence.The statistical analyses were performed using the SPSS statistical package (advanced version 23), and p < 0.05 was considered significant.

Essay Lessons and the Essay Report
A qualitative survey involving the same students was conducted during the same semester in the form of an essay report.In the latter part of each lesson, the teacher introduced the topic for the writing, and provided a step-by-step explanation of how to write an essay.Each unit contained a goal for writing an essay; for example, the goal in one unit was to write an introduction in which the students were required to include the following: an "attention getter", a thesis statement, three supporting statements in the body of the text, and a concluding sentence.Another unit explained how to write the body of the text; the students were required to write a topic sentence followed by supporting sentences including explanations, examples, statistics, or experts' opinions.Yet another unit explained how to write a conclusion; in this unit, the students were required to include a summary of the thesis statement, a summary of the three reasons provided in the body of the text, and final comments.The students completed the assignment at home, were paired in the subsequent class, and corrected their mistakes in consultation with each other for the writing practice.A thirty-minute, in-class essay writing task was assigned on the final day.The students were asked to write about their opinions of the student-centered lessons that included the point-addition system they had experienced, and the teacher emphasized the importance of writing logical and persuasive essays.

Validity of the Likert Scale
Cronbach's alphas for the eight items of enjoyment, those for the eight items of anxiety, those for the six items of motivation, and those for the four items of self-confidence were 0.804, 0.840, 0.800, and 0.912, respectively.

Descriptive Statistics of the Participants
These are shown in Table 1.Note.The range of TOEIC IP score, from 10 to 990 for a total score.The range of enjoyment and anxiety, from 8 (minimum) to 40 (maximum) respectively; The range of motivation, from 6 (minimum) to 30 (maximum); The range of self-confidence, from 4 (minimum) to 20 (maximum).

The Quantitative Findings
The results of the multiple linear regression analysis showed that F (1, 107) = 7.706, p < 0.001, with an R 2 of 0.230.The overall regression equation (see Table 2) can be formulated as follows: The scores for TOEIC IP after the semester = -43.584+ 1.351 (enjoyment) -3.001 (anxiety) + 15.304 (motivation) + 17.213 (self-confidence).The significant predictors of the scores for the TOEIC IP were motivation, self-confidence, and enjoyment.Of these, motivation and self-confidence were the stronger predictors, followed by enjoyment.Anxiety was not a significant predictor.In brief, the high TOEIC IP scores were correlated significantly with the levels of motivation, self-confidence, and enjoyment.After checking Cook's statistics, there were no cases in which the absolute value exceeded 3; thus, it was determined that there were no outliers.

Findings Based on the Essay Reports
The quantitative survey in this study did not reveal a statistically significant association between low levels of anxiety and greater English proficiency.Therefore, the reasons should be explored by analyzing the feelings that the students expressed in their essays.The essay data (the students' opinions) were summarized and categorized according to autonomy, ZPD, FLE, FLCA, proficiency development, motivation, self-confidence, and individual differences.However, the discussion should focus on specific factors such as anxiety, English proficiency, and low levels of self-confidence in order to identify the reasons that higher English proficiency was not associated with low levels of anxiety in this study (see Table 3).The students' average TOEIC IP scores in each category were calculated (the average TOEIC IP score was around 420).Low proficient students develop inferiority complexes.
Low proficient students feel the fear of dropping out of the course.
Some students feel that the content of the class is difficult, regardless of their proficiency High proficient students would not learn anything from low proficient students.

Low self-confidence 23 388
Afraid of making mistakes.
Feel guilty for not speaking up.
Worried that students' grades might be lowered simply because they don't actively participate in class, and it's not right for the teacher to evaluate the student for that.

Discussion
Due to the change in the English-education policy in Japan, and the EFL environment in which there is little opportunity to speak English outside of the classroom, many universities are focusing on improving students' skills in English communication by implementing student-centered classrooms.The purpose is to improve the students' holistic language ability, namely speaking, writing, listening, and reading, via various activities, including oral practice to explain their opinions and ideas to others in English.The university at which this research was conducted adopted this principle in its lessons.
The quantitative study showed that the students who attained high TOEIC IP scores were motivated, confident, and enjoyed their lessons; this echoes the findings of MacIntyre, Gregersen, and Mercer (2019), which revealed that students who enjoyed the experience of learning a TL also had increased levels of self-confidence, motivation, and TL proficiency.Moreover, Jordan and Gray (2019) stated that teachers should create student-centered environments and increase their students' motivation by searching extensively for information by themselves, thinking profoundly, and deepening their knowledge.Najeeb (2013) also stated that teachers needed to identify various enjoyable ways to encourage students to practice speaking in order to increase their motivation when learning a TL.Self-confidence was also found to be an important factor in improved English skills (van Batenburg et al., 2019), and the teacher's role was found to be crucial for increasing the students' self-confidence (Bai, Chao, & Wang, 2019).Zhang (2019) also mentioned that motivation, self-confidence, enjoyment, and anxiety could be associated with students' performances.
The present research investigated an environment in which students could learn together with their classmates through pair and group work.This educational strategy was developed using Vygotsky's (1978) ZPD, which has been supported by many SLA researchers.Activities in pairs and small groups have been found to make most students feel comfortable (Koch & Terrell, 1991).Story-telling activities in group work have also been found to increase students' motivation and self-confidence (Ahlquist, 2019), while van Batenburg et al. ( 2019) found self-confidence was an important factor in improved English skills, and Yan and Horwitz (2008) proposed that being highly motivated to learn a language could lead to increased self-confidence.Moreover, Saito, Dewaele, Abe and In'nami (2018) reported that, if students enjoyed their classes, their motivation and self-confidence would increase, their anxiety would decrease, and their TL proficiency would increase as a result.The findings in this research mainly supported the reports of previous researchers, and showed that sharing opinions and ideas with classmates and knowing others' opinions appeared to have enabled the students to inspire each other in positive ways that increased their motivation, self-confidence, and enjoyment.
However, the results of this study differed from those of previous studies that showed that students with low levels of anxiety had greater English proficiency; that is, the result of the linear multiple regression analysis showed that there was no statistically significant relationship between the students' English proficiency and their levels of anxiety.One possible explanation might be that the point-addition system was not suitable for students who were extremely anxious, as it fueled their anxiety.The new system even caused students with good English proficiency to become unusually anxious, which may have been why the statistical analysis did not indicate a significant relationship.
In fact, in this research, students with limited speaking fluency may have developed greater inferiority complexes, and may have been afraid that they were in danger of dropping out of the course.Moreover, strongly anxious students who lacked self-confidence may have felt that they could not raise their hands, felt guilty for not participating in the point-addition system, and were concerned that their grades would drop as a result.Furthermore, some students not confident despite their TOEIC scores (listening and reading) being high.Such students were not accustomed to speaking, which is a different skill, and were afraid of making mistakes; thus, they could not participate voluntarily in activities in class.Their limited experience of speaking in English made them confused about speaking, despite having strong abilities in listening and reading.This was similar to the sample of students cited in an interview survey by Gregersen and Horwitz (2002); the students in their study who observed their classmates speaking English well confessed their poor ability to speak, developed inferiority complexes, and felt guilty because they could not join in the activities in which they felt they should participate.They thought that their grades would decline or that they might need to drop out of the course, which caused a further loss of self-confidence.They were trapped in a vicious circle.This view was supported by Yan and Horwitz (2008), who assumed that high levels of anxiety could lead to a decrease in the motivation to learn a language, as well as in self-confidence.
In addition, some students mentioned that they could not follow the lessons or speak about the topics provided by the teacher because the content was too difficult for them.This is in line with Sakai and Kikuchi (2009), who stated that the level of topics and teaching materials must be tailored to the students' abilities.Furthermore, some of the students doubted whether the teacher could evaluate them appropriately.Indeed, the fact that students do not speak up in class does not mean that their English proficiency is low.Another similar problem was that, when some members of a group had low proficiency in English, the students with better English skills were afraid that pair/group work would not be an effective means of having their mistakes corrected, and that they would not learn anything from their group members.To solve this problem, Murphey, Falout, Fukuda, and Fukada (2014) suggested that students who could speak English well should become student-teachers and help their classmates who could not speak English proficiently, as this may result in constructive, group-framed motivation.As a control group was not created, one can only guess what would have happened with a group that did not use the point-addition system.Therefore, a control group should be created and a similar survey should be conducted in future research.

Conclusion
A quantitative survey (a questionnaire) and a qualitative survey (an essay report) were conducted in four college freshman EFL classes that employed student-centered communicative lessons with the point-addition system.
The aim of the questionnaire study was to investigate the relationships among students' English proficiency, FLE, FLCA, motivation, and self-confidence.The results of the multiple linear regression analysis revealed that the students, who were motivated and confident and who enjoyed lessons, could expect to have higher TOEIC IP scores.In brief, in a student-centered class that included extensive pair/group work, the students' increased motivation, self-confidence, and enjoyment were key factors in the ultimate attainment of greater English proficiency.However, the results of this study differed from those in other research because they did not show a statistically significant relationship between students' high levels of English proficiency and their low levels of anxiety.The results of the essay report revealed that the implementation of student-centered classrooms, including the point-addition system, caused even those students with high levels of English proficiency to feel more anxious during the lessons.Therefore, different results might have been obtained had the point-addition system not been included in the lessons.Based on the results of this research, it would be preferable for teachers to make every effort to increase their students' motivation and self-confidence by increasing their enjoyment, while simultaneously removing overly stress-producing aspects that may create anxiety.

Table 1 .
Descriptive Statistics of the Participants

Table 2 .
The Results of the Multiple Linear Regression Analysis

Table 3 .
The Result of the Essay Reports