Students Motivation and Anxiety - Essay Sample

Psychological constructs are traits and qualities of an individual that cannot be identified purely by observation. Examples of psychological constructs include abilities, religious views, emotions, attitudes, personality traits, anxiety, and self-esteem. Primarily, the constructs refer to a persons affinities to behave or feel in a particular way. Nevertheless, psychological constructs cannot be measured like a concrete characteristic. Instead, the measurement of psychology is conducted by a qualified therapist of psychiatrist who determines a persons mental capacity and levels of depression or anxiety. The paper focuses on anxiety as a psychological construct and the connection it has with self-motivation. Anxiety is one of the components that boosts an individuals motivation and shapes their accomplishment when interacting effectively.

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Self-motivation is a basic aspect of a persons life and influences how they go about their day-to-day activities. Wolf and Smith (2009) affirm that motivation, anxiety, and performance can affect a student who takes a test because of what it means to them in terms of results. Authors articulate that when students sit for a test, their performance is expected to be influenced by the perceived consequence of the test to that student. As they explain, results from their experiment revealed that the consequence of a test had a strong influence on motivation, and ultimately performance. Interestingly, individuals who have high levels of anxiety have a tendency to have pressure, loss of control, and feel less motivated. Authors examination on performance of students motivation and anxiety go hand-in-hand. On a broader perspective, when students become distracted and have a difficulty concentrating, their motivation will decease and eventually affect their performance.

Motivation and anxiety is applicable in the way individuals learn how to do certain thing. A study by Tsai and Chang (2013) investigated motivation and anxiety of English learning in students at a University in Taiwan. Results from their study revealed that English learning anxiety had an impact on English learning motivation depending on majors and genders. As authors explain, both motivation and anxiety are significant factors in second and foreign language acquisition and affectivity. Also, they add that motivation is one of the primary factors, which impacts the rate and success of language learning. More so, they avow that anxiety has always been detrimental to performance of learning skills that require attention and effort. Apparently, a person cannot have the motivation to do anything if their anxiety levels are high. Both motivation and anxiety play a crucial role in learning particular aspects in life. Considerably, most foreign students learn how to speak English. Due to the constant pressure of knowing the English dialect, they tend to become anxious, and their levels of motivation begin to diminish.

In summary, anxiety is one of the components that boosts an individuals motivation and shapes their success when interacting effectively. On a large note, a successful way of improving self-motivation is by forming judgments and having the ability to control levels of anxiety. Moreover, a lack of motivation always results in anxious behaviors. As outlined in the paper, people become anxious because they have a lot of pressure, and so they lack the motivation to do anything. If individuals want to improve their performance and motivate themselves, they have to stop weighing themselves with more anxiety. Overall, individuals ought to harmonize anxiety and exploit it in a positive manner to increase their motivation to perform.

References

Tsai, C. C., and Chang, C. (2013). The Study on Motivation and Anxiety of English Learning of

Students at a Taiwan Technical University. International Journal of English Language Teaching Vol.1, No.1, pp.24-41. Wolf, L.F, and Smith, J. F. (2009). The Consequence of Consequence: Motivation, Anxiety, and Test Performance. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15324818ame0803_3