The Impacts of Cooperative Learning on Demoting Communication Anxiety: With Special Reference to Engineering Undergraduates

Abstract

The English language is considered the lingua franca among speakers of different languages and it is predominantly a major subject in the world education system. Communication anxiety manipulates a dominant role in restricting communication among second language learners of English (ESL). ESL learners decline to converse in English since many scholars experience language anxiety in diverse forms. The main objective of the study was to investigate whether working in groups is effective to demote communication anxiety experienced by ESL learners and the sub-objective was to examine students' perceptions of group work in mitigating speaking anxiety. Nervousness and uneasiness are considered a complex and multi-faceted mental marvel by past analysts and they have proposed the utilization of diverse points of view and approaches to examine this phenomenon. Data were collected through quantitative data collection methods. 50 questionnaires were distributed at the pre-stage and the post-stage. Cooperative learning was adopted as a teaching strategy at the post-stage. The discoveries proposed that cooperative learning made a difference in easing and decreasing the communication anxiety felt by ESL learners and empowered them to utilize the second language. At the poststage students portrayed incredible enhancements in their readiness to speak and take part in several errands and exercises in an English-speaking classroom. Through the discoveries, the analyst was able to suggest techniques to instructors that would offer assistance lighten communication anxiety felt by ESL learners by generating a difference to be less self-conscious and reinforce certainty.