The study of communication apprehension (CA) in L1 and L2 among Thai junior high school students

This study aimed to investigate the communication apprehension (CA) of Thai junior high school students, from 8th and 9th grade, studying in an English Program, when communicating in Thai language (L1) and English language (L2). The study also investigated whether there was any communication apprehension difference among students of different GPA. The total number of participants was 40 students. The research instrument was the PRCA-24 (McCroskey, 1982) translated into a Thai version with proven construct validity (Rimkeeratikul, 2008). The majority of the participants were found to have a moderate level of CA in Thai language, but a high level of CA in English language. The CA in English was higher than in Thai. The dimension with the highest CA score in Thai language was public speaking, whilst meetings had the highest CA score in English language. Furthermore, the participants with GPA of under 3.50 had higher CA scores in both languages. This could possibly imply that being apprehensive about communicating is related to an individual’s academic achievement.

本研究旨在探究修习英语项目（English Program）的泰国8、9年级初中生，在用母语泰语（L1）与英语（L2）进行交流时的沟通焦虑（communication apprehension, CA）状况。本研究同时探究了不同GPA学生的沟通焦虑是否存在显著差异。本次研究共纳入40名参与者。本研究采用的研究工具为经翻译为泰语版且已验证结构效度（construct validity）的PRCA-24量表（McCroskey, 1982；Rimkeeratikul, 2008）。研究结果显示，多数参与者在泰语沟通中处于中等程度的沟通焦虑，而在英语沟通中则呈现高水平沟通焦虑，且英语沟通焦虑水平显著高于泰语。在泰语沟通中，得分最高的沟通焦虑维度为公开演讲；而在英语沟通中，得分最高的维度则为会议交流。此外，GPA低于3.50的参与者在两种语言下的沟通焦虑得分均更高。该结果或可表明，沟通焦虑与个体的学业成绩存在相关性。