Anxiety factor affecting ESP students’ performative knowledge in learning English language

Classroom anxiety becomes a hot psycholinguistic theme and it is strongly believed to be able to hugely impact upon learners’ actual performance in their learning outcome. This theme has been discussed in the field of a second and foreign language learning. This paper aims to explore the degree of contribution, the correlation between anxiety and actual performance in ESP students’ English language learning. The questionnaire was designed based on the test anxiety inventory developed by (TESOL Quarterly, 20(3):559, 1986) the sample of population of study consists of 149 participants in the second semester of 2025–2026. To analyze data, the aid of SPSS software, Pearson’s correlation and Multiple regression, was mainly used to determine if there was any statistically significant correlation between dependent and independent variables and indicate which one among the variables is the best predictor. The findings showed that, according to descriptive analysis, score range of anxiety lies at medium–low (ML) while actual performance reaches at medium high (MH), it proved that anxiety is the major cause of students’ poor performance. Beside, correlation analysis proposed by Pearson’s test indicated that there was a significant negative correlation between anxiety and actual performance at the level of 0.01. Furthermore, anxiety was a significantly negative predictor of actual performance in ESP learning. Particularly, state anxiety is the best predictor of actual performance. Overall, the multiple regression results revealed that anxiety explained 42.9% (large affect size) to the variability of performance on average, this implies that 57.1% may be attributed by the other variables that were not found in this study, and further researches should be conducted to bridge the gaps. This study revealed that ESP student will get poor performance if they increase anxiety in their English language learning. Three best ways to lessen students’ anxiety were suggested in the pedagogical implications; teachers should give students excellent learning opportunities to practise classroom activities, establish a good rapport, create a safe environment to facilitate their learning.