The Affective Factors and English Language Performance Amongst Foundation Students in a Government Linked University

This study aims to explore affective factors of motivation and anxiety towards English language performance amongst Foundation students at a selected government linked university (GLU) in Perak, Malaysia. English language is the lingua franca for the working world. As the Malaysian Education Blueprint aims to produce graduates that are able to work in the international arena, therefore it is important to put focus on factors that makes language acquisition a success. Anxiety and motivation have been researched separately in the past. In this paper, these two variables are combined and investigated. There are two Research Objectives in this paper which are expanded into seven items. The sample consists of 130 respondents amongst the foundation students in a GLU. Quantitative data was collected to investigate the correlations between independent variable of affective factors and dependent variable of English language performance. The study showed that students with low anxiety and high motivation achieved better in their language performance. Thus, this paper recommends for exploration of pedagogy and infrastructure in improving the success of students’ performance by considering the affective factors.