Motivation, Self-Confidence, and Anxiety in English Language Learning: Indonesian and Thai Students’ Perspectives

Abstract

Second language learners often find obstacles in their journey to reach target-language competence. Three of them are related to motivation, self-confidence, and anxiety. Motivation is about the personal drive or desire to learn the target language, while self-confidence is related to the learners’ belief or trust on their abilities to be successful in learning. Anxiety means students’ nervousness or worry when they face something difficult or uncomfortable. This paper deals with a study conducted to seek the differences between second language learners from Indonesia and Thailand in terms of motivation, self-confidence, and anxiety. Participants were Indonesian and Thai students. Twenty Indonesian students were taking Academic Writing class in Semester Antara (Short Semester) of 2017-2018 Academic Year, at the English Language Education (ELE) Study Program of Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana (UKSW). This course was offered in their third year of college. Twenty-one Thai students were also taking Academic Writing course in their third year. One central question to be answered is: is there any difference between Indonesian and Thai students in terms of motivation, self-confidence, and self-esteem. Data were mainly derived from open-ended questionnaires distributed to twenty students of Academic Writing class in the ELE study program, (Faculty of Language and Arts) FLA, UKSW Salatiga, Indonesia, and 21 students majoring in the English language from Huachiew Chalermprakiet University Thailand. Findings showed that students from both countries were very much influenced by parental factors.