Exploring ethnic minority students’ perspectives on anxiety in learning Chinese as an additional language: an interpretative phenomenological analysis

Abstract

Existing research on ethnic minority students in Hong Kong (HK) has documented their struggles in learning Chinese-as-an-Additional-Language (CAL) and the linguistic challenges for ethnic minority students to learn CAL at school can be the source of their anxiety, which may prevent them from integrating into HK society. The paper aims to explore ethnic minority students’ perceptions of how their Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) affect their learning of CAL. The data, from semi-structured interviews with ethnic minority students of varying CAL anxiety levels and fieldnotes from classroom observations and informal teacher interviews, were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The findings illustrate that while FLA can certainly influence students’ CAL learning experiences, other personal and sociocultural factors, such as students’ motivation to learn CAL, the prevalence of English-as-a-Lingua-Franca in society, and the impact of examination policies, also contribute significantly. This paper argued that the perceived relevance and importance of CAL in students’ lives are closely linked to FLA and can contribute to the lack of motivation observed in students with high or mid-level FLA. Thus, there is a need for teachers to attend to the interplay between other sociocultural factors and FLA when understanding ethnic minority students’ CAL learning behaviours.