**6. Discussion**

#### **6.1 Levels of and changes in AOC anxiety and expectancy-value beliefs**

The present study revealed that nearly half participants reported to be anxious about AOC, as found in their peers in English for general purpose (EGP) situations [7–9, 34]. Moreover, the reduction in the AOC anxiety level was not significant toward the end of the semester, different from many studies in EGP contexts where the participants often report to be significantly less anxious about speaking English after a period of time [3, 4]. This might be because as their exposure and access to English increase, students naturally become less anxious about speaking English. Nevertheless, it is generally more challenging to learn AOC in a SL/FL in that it demands more knowledge from learners, like academic vocabulary, more logical thinking and content knowledge as well as knowledge of research. As reported by the interviewees in the present study. Coupled with the fact that EFL students generally have fewer opportunities to practice AOC in spite of various activities organized in class, students need more time and practice to become significantly less anxious about speaking English for academic purposes, as revealed in the present study. Nevertheless, this needs to be further researched with larger samples in more contexts.

Meanwhile, this study showed that the students had low expectancy of themselves yet placed high attainment value, intrinsic values, utility values and cost values on AOC in both phases. These findings clearly indicated that the participants were not so confident in communicating with others about research in English. However, they knew quite well that it was important and useful to be able to do so, that they wanted to learn AOC well, and that they must make great efforts to learn AOC well, similar to their peers in [12]. This might be largely because as institutions of higher education began to increasingly stress research and publication and strive to become internationally famous, it becomes increasingly important for postgraduates, especially doctoral students, to be able to communicate effectively with peers and present their research projects and findings in such settings as lectures, seminars and conferences, in both oral and written forms. Another interesting finding was that the participants placed the highest attainment value in phase 1 but the highest utility value in phase 2. This result, if viewed from a cross-sectional

#### *The Interaction of Expectancy-Value Beliefs and Anxiety in Learning Academic Oral English… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98181*

perspective, was consistent with the finding that SL/FL learners often have higher instrumental motives relevant to their current and future goals [65, 66].

In addition, the analyses showed that there was significant increase in students' expectancy and insignificant increase in attainment value, intrinsic value, utility value and cost value over the semester, different from the findings in [12, 67]. This can be attributed to the different roles played by expectancy and subjective task values respectively in the learning process, with the former having a stronger association with academic performance while the latter predicting effort-related decision making [49]. As learners approach the end of a learning period, their proficiency in the language would naturally be improved, which in turn boosts their expectancy beliefs. In addition, the statistically insignificant increase in cost value in the present study might be because the participants had already invested a lot in learning AOC in both phases, leaving little room for further sacrifices, as reported by the interviewees.

#### **6.2 Interaction between expectancy-value beliefs and AOC anxiety**

As found in a number of existing studies on relationships between foreign language anxiety and expectancy or self-efficacy [2, 21, 68, 69], the present study showed that expectancy was not only significantly negatively correlated with AOCAS but also a powerful negative predictor for AOC anxiety in both phases, similar to that in [12]. Understandably, a higher expectancy of success or one's ability often leads to higher confidence and lower anxiety. This might also partly explain why the reduction in AOC anxiety was accompanied by the increase in expectancy of success in the present study. Moreover, this result highlighted the long-term impact of expectancy on learning achievement motives. As reported in [53] on applying expectancy-value principles in daily teaching, the expectancy component of motivation has a closer association than subjective task values with learners' conscious learning experience. Consequently, it is of great necessity to help students to establish strong expectancy for success [29].

Echoing with the negative correlation between AOCAS and intrinsic value and the positive correlation between AOCAS and cost value in phase 2, intrinsic value was revealed to be a powerful negative while cost value a positive predictor for AOC anxiety in phase 2, as found in [70]. These findings indicated that learners who had greater internal desire to learn AOC well experienced lower AOC anxiety. This is because intrinsic motivation is a greater force in learning, as discussed in [42]. These findings also suggested that students who believed that they had to sacrifice a lot to be good at AOC experienced higher levels of anxiety. This might be because students knew that it took time and efforts to learn AOC well while they worried about the learning outcome at the same time. They were afraid that their learning outcomes might not deserve the sacrifices they made. This might also in return partly explain why the participants had rather low expectancy of themselves on AOC in the present study. Probably just because the respondents were not confident in speaking English for academic purposes, they experienced high AOC anxiety, even though they had internal desire to and were willing to invest a lot to learn it well. Hence, it remains important to enhance learners' perceived self-worth and expectancy of success/themselves, as discussed in [70]. On the other hand, however, this might alert us to the possibility that exclusively boosting one component may not necessarily translate to an overall increased achievement motive or enhanced learning experience. In effect, the improvement of one component is very likely to be constrained by the others due to interactive effects between them. Therefore, we need to be well aware of the multiplicative effects generated by all expectancy and value components of motivation. This also justifies more research

on the complicated interaction mechanism of expectancy-value beliefs so that the power of the whole really becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
