TRANSLATING AND UNDERSTANDING CONTENT AT THE SAME TIME: A PROCESS MODEL OF LISTENING ANXIETY AND COPING STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH-MEDIUM ENGINEERING PROGRAMS

Abstract

Engineering students in English-medium instruction (EMI) classrooms must process spoken English while constructing disciplinary understanding, increasing cognitive demands that may give rise to listening anxiety and hinder learning. Despite growing interest in EMI, listening anxiety in discipline-specific contexts remains underexplored, particularly regarding how it emerges and is regulated. This qualitative study examined listening anxiety among undergraduate engineering students in EMI programs at two public universities in northeastern Thailand. Data were collected through semi-structured individual and focus group interviews and analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis. The findings identified five situational triggers of listening anxiety: linguistic complexity, accent familiarity, performance-based anxiety, instructional clarity, and contextual barriers. Students managed these challenges through self-preparation, peer support, instructional scaffolding, technology-enhanced comprehension, and motivation-driven listening development. The study proposes an EMI Listening Anxiety-Coping Process Model that explains how listening anxiety emerges from the interaction of situational triggers, cognitive-affective processing, anxiety manifestations, and learner regulation. The process model positions intelligibility as the central mechanism linking linguistic variation, cognitive processing, and emotional responses during disciplinary listening. The study advances a process-oriented understanding of EMI listening anxiety through a process model and offers theoretical and pedagogical insights for enhancing comprehension, participation, and learner regulation in EMI engineering classrooms.

Keywords: English-medium instruction; listening anxiety; engineering education; intelligibility; learner regulation