A Study of High School Students English Language Learning Anxiety and English Language Achievement: with Particular Reference to Grade 12 at Jimma Preparatory School, Jimma

The present study was aimed to investigate the relationship between English language learning classroom anxiety and students' English language achievement test result. For this purpose 210 grade 12(twelve) students were randomly selected from Jimma Preparatory School. A self reporting questionnaire i.e. Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), developed by Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope (1986), consisted of 33 items, was administered to measure the level of foreign language classroom anxiety of the students. The students' first semester English mid term exam result was used to determine the relationship between English language classroom anxiety and English language achievement test result .Furthermore , descriptive statistics to determine anxiety level, t-test to find out significance difference between males and females students anxiety level and achievement and Pearson's Moment Correlation Coefficient to determine relationship between anxiety and achievement test result were used to test the research problems. The result of the data analysis indicated that most of the students were found to be anxious. With respect to sex no significance difference was observed between males and females on their foreign language classroom anxiety level. The study further confirmed that there was no significant negative relationship between students' English language classroom anxiety and English language achievement test result at the significance level of O.01.The study also investigated that there was achievement test result variation among the subjects of the study with respect to their anxiety level. Finally, it was found that though males' achievement test result was a little bit higher than that of females, no significant difference was found on achievement between them. The findings of this study depicted that anxiety is prevalent among the subjects of the study and had negative correlations with their English language achievement test result. And the study made recommendations aimed at reducing classroom English language learning anxiety.