Online Language Courses

Methodology
The Setting and Subjects
This study was designed to identify and compare the perceptions of first and second-semester university students towards feelings of anxiety experienced during foreign language learning as measured by the FLCAS scale. Specifically, the objective of this study was to investigate and compare the perceptions of 114 students (Group One) surveyed at Northern Arizona University during the third week of their first-semester Spanish class with those of 169 students (Group Two) surveyed at the same institution during the three last weeks of their’ second-semester Spanish class. The null hypothesis postulated and tested to determine if there were differences between the two groups in the perceptions they held towards foreign language anxiety was “there is no significant difference of perceptions between Group One and Group Two for each one of the FLCAS thirty-three variables towards anxiety in foreign language learning.” If the levels of anxiety at the end of the second semester of the students taking Spanish were significantly lower than the levels of anxiety of students at the beginning of their first-semester Spanish, it could be argued that anxiety would have diminished or dissipated as students persevered in the study of the foreign language. On the other hand, if the levels of anxiety shown by students at the end of their second-semester Spanish were similar to or higher than the levels of anxiety shown by the students at the beginning of the first-semester Spanish, it could be argued that anxiety is specific to beginning foreign language learning and that it does not necessarily diminish with increased experience and proficiency during the two semesters of foreign language acquisition.
The sample that Group One (first-semester Spanish) represented consisted of 114 students from five introductory Spanish classes (SPA 101) randomly selected from 34 courses taught (17 each semester) in the spring and fall semesters of 1998, The sample that Group Two (second-semester Spanish) represented consisted of 169 students from ten second-semester Spanish classes (SPA 102) randomly selected from 20 courses also taught (10 each semester) in the spring and fall semesters of 1999 at Northern Arizona University. Design
This comparative study possesses the characteristics of descriptive/analytical research in that it is concerned with the perceptions of respondents. The type of descriptive research was the survey method. ANOVA values were found for the thirty-three variables for the two groups. Values significantly higher than p rejected the null hypothesis at the 0.05 probability level. Values found not to be significant indicated that the perceptions of the groups were statistically similar.
The instrument for the survey was the FLCAS questionnaire shown as Appendix 1. The questionnaire consisted of thirty-three items, each one on a 5-point scale ranging from “strongly agree” (scale point 1) to “strongly disagree” (scale point 5) the middle point being neutral (scale point 3). The purpose of the scale is to examine the scope and severity of foreign language anxiety. The scale has demonstrated internal reliability, achieving an alpha coefficient of .93 with all items producing significant corrected item-total scale corrections. Test-reliability over eight weeks yielded an r = .83 (p<.001) (Horwitz et al. 1986). Anxiety scores lower than 3.0 would indicate some level of anxiety for questions 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 33. Anxiety scores higher than 3.0 would indicate some level of anxiety for questions 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 18, 22, 28, 32.
To take into account the potential violation of the independence assumption that is part of univariate tests of between-group difference, three summated scale scores were created by adding together the scores of individual survey items. Due to the fact that there was likely to be content overlap or multicollinearity among the summated scores, a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to test for significance of between-group differences. Application of the MANOVA allowed the researchers to consider the three summated scale scores for each subject as a potentially intercorrelated or overlapping set of measures. At the same time, the MANOVA statistical test was used to preserve the overall alpha Type I error rate in the between-group difference testing. The data was processed using the SPSS Statistical Package.

Results
Table 2 shows the mean and standard deviation for answers to the thirty-three questions by group. For Group One, levels of anxiety were found in responses to questions 1, 14, 22, 28, 30, 32, and 37 (7 questions). For Group Two, levels of anxiety were found in responses to questions 1, 6, 9, 10, 12, 14, 18, 22, 30, 32, and 33 (11 questions). Table 3 shows the ANOVA value of F obtained by dividing the between-mean square by the within-mean square of scores, and the significance value for each question. The results indicate that the perceptions of the two groups were significantly different at a 0.05 level in five of the questions posed (3, 5, 12, 16, 19), while the perceptions on the remaining twenty-eight questions were statistically similar. Inspection of the scores for the five questions with significant differences reveals that in question 3, “I tremble when I know that I’m going to be called on in language class,” both groups disagree about trembling when called in class, although second semester students (M=3.63) were less confident in their perceptions than first semester students (M=3.98). Question 5 asked students whether “it wouldn’t bother them at all to take more foreign language.” Both groups agreed, SPA 102 students again being significantly less confident (M=2.70) than SPA 101 students (M=2.41). Students of SPA 101 disagreed (M=3.32) while SPA 102 agreed (M=2.93), the latter being significantly less confident about the answer. On question 16, “even if I am well prepared for language class, I feel anxious about it,” first semester (M=3.36) and second semester (M=3.11) student disagree, the mean score of SPA 102 students being lower than that of SPA 101 students. Question 19, “I am afraid that my language teacher is ready to correct every mistake I make,” showed that SPA 101 students disagree on this statement (M=3.65) and SPA 102 students also disagree (M=3.36), the mean score being again lower for second semester students. The statistically significant results of these five questions seem to indicate that, although the two groups did not show perceptions of anxiety in the majority of cases, the levels of confidence experienced by beginning foreign language students were higher than those of second semester students.
The absence of significance in the results of the remaining twenty-eight questions showed that the perceptions of the two groups surveyed were statistically similar. However, a visual comparison of the mean reveals that in all cases, the level of apprehension was higher for students taking SPA 102 courses than for students taking SPA 101 courses; this indicates that anxiety may not diminish with the experience acquired in two semesters of language learning.
Tables 4, 5 and 6 show the summary descriptive statistics for “Communication Apprehension,” “Fear of Negative Evaluation,” and “General Feeling of Anxiety.” The tables provide the total number of subjects for groups One and Two, the mean scores and standard deviations. In all the cases, the average summated score for Group Two is slightly lower than that of Group One. Also, in each case the standard deviation (within-group variability of summated scale scores) are approximately equal.
The goal of the MANOVA test was to ascertain whether the slightly lower average summate scale scores of Group Two were sufficiently lower to assume a statistically significant difference between the two groups. Table 7 shows the results of the MANOVA test.
A follow-up pairwise group comparison on each of the summated scale scores was conducted by applying a Fisher’s PLSD test to the data. The test preserved a “familywise” or over alpha level of 0.05 across the set of the three intercorrelated summated scale scores. Table 8 shows the results Of the application of Fisher’s test. When disaggregated and tested individually for between-group mean difference at the overall familywise alpha error rate of 0.05, Communication Apprehension and Fear of Negative Evaluation yielded significant differences. The General Anxiety scale, while marginal, was not significant at the same alpha level. This more than likely contributed to the overall 0.1064 p-value of the simultaneous MANOVA test.