Abstract Book of the 8th International Conference on Advanced Research in Education
Year: 2025
DOI:
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Effects of Personality Traits and Affective Factors of Japanese University Students on Sentence Stress in English
Hiroko Nakamura, Namie Saeki, Kazuhiro Nomura
ABSTRACT:
This study examines how personality traits and affective factors influence Japanese university students’ proficiency in English sentence stress, using physiological and acoustic analyses. The research addressed three questions: (1) How are personality traits and affective factors related to physiological responses during oral reading in English? (2) Do these traits and factors affect sentence stress in oral reading? (3) Are there differences in the impact of these traits on sentence stress between students with high and low English oral proficiency? Thirty-one participants completed three questionnaires: Trait Shyness Scale (TSS), Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA), and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), alongside TOEIC speaking tests. The procedure involved wearing a smartwatch to monitor heart rate, reading an English text, a Japanese version of the text, and then the same English text again. Key findings include: (1) Participants with higher communication apprehension had a higher heart rate during the first English reading compared to the second. (2) Those with greater shyness exhibited a narrower pitch range in the first reading compared to those with lower shyness, although this difference disappeared in the second reading. (3) Participants with higher shyness and communication apprehension initially did not use nuclear accents effectively, but some improved in the second reading. (4) Students with high shyness in the low proficiency group initially used flat intonation but later showed more variation compared to those with lower shyness and communication apprehension. This study implies the importance of teaching prosody to Japanese students with high levels of anxiety.
keywords: communication apprehension; heart rate; L2 anxiety; shyness; sentence stress