Research Day

Research Day Reflection Essay

During research day of Friday April  I was able to attend an oral presentation on the growth of foreign language and the anxiety that comes with it. During this presentation the researcher explained how when it came to learning English as a foreign language the anxiety levels were higher as compared to other languages. The researcher also spoke about the anxiety also has a correlation with low levels on language assessment tests. The purpose of the test however, was to see how this anxiety affected students who had English as their primary language. The researcher explained that her hypothesis was that students who has English as their primary language would create methods in which they could understand a new language due to having to learn English and the difficulty that comes with it. The researcher believed that the children in her study would apply their learning strategies to a new language. She also hypothesized that high or low levels of anxiety can predict the grade outcome of a student’s language learning ability. The researcher explains that this is because students with low levels of anxiety tend to aim for a higher grade and expect that grade as opposed to students with high levels of anxiety. In order to complete the study the researcher attended two classrooms, one in which the students were learning a new language and one in which English was the students second language. She interviewed all of the children and based on her comprised scaled gave each child a grade for anxiety and compared it with their test scores. After completing her study the researcher was able to accept her hypothesis. If I had conducted the study I would have done the study in a class room in which students were just learning their predominate language, 1st grade or younger. In all, I believe that this study was done accurately and presented the best as compared to other oral presentations I had attended.

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