Relationship Between Communication Apprehension and Learning Styles

Communication Apprehension (CA) is when students have fear and anxiety in initiating or making conversations towards other people obviously lack oral communication skills. During 1940s, difficulty in verbal communication ,which causes students anxiety, was once reported in the literature and termed as “Communication Apprehension” that is “an individual's level of fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another individual or individuals”.

In a study of junior high school students, Hurt, Preiss, and Davis found a substantial correlation between communication apprehension and attitude toward school in general. As level of communication apprehension increased, the attitude toward school became more negative. Half of the conditions in conversing towards other people may stay as a predominant struggle in the journey of fearing communication that may lead to a negative communication skill development for an individual.

Social skills, Oral communications skills and Self-esteem of a certain individual can be affected because of Communication apprehension which now causes physical and emotional implications. Individuals with high communication apprehension has an ongoing problem socially, academically and cognitively.

Business majors’, namely non-commercial enterprise majors, have a few certain studies that hold CA stages over accounting majors. The dispute about the comparable weakness over accounting graduate’s communication aptitude level has been ancient. Therefore, in conforming to the implications concerning CA, accounting educators think about improving student’s verbal communication skills as a necessity.

Group Discussion

Group discussion is a student-centered communication facilitated by a professional teacher that helps students in learning effectively in a classroom setting. Theoretically, it is a discussion between groups of individuals that is referred as an informal discussion that last for a long period of time with individuals who relates with each other as per interests. A total of 38.8% of the students agreed that they dislike participating in group discussions, while 22.4% strongly agreed, followed by 2.0% who disagreed and 36.8% who remained neutral. Moreover, 63.3% of the students disagreed whereas 10.2% of them strongly disagreed that they are comfortable participating in group discussions. Meanwhile, a total of 44.9% of the respondents agreed and 12.2% strongly agreed that engaging in a group discussion with new people made them tense and nervous. Only 8.2% of the respondents disagreed while another 8.2% were undecided (Tom et al., 2013). In a study of student attitudes toward specific types of classes, McCroskey and Andersen (1976) found that low and moderate communication apprehensive preferred small classes to mass lecture classes.

Public Speaking

Raja (2013) stated that “Communication has become one of the markers of social solidarity, social ranking and professional capabilities and most of the components of the language are learnt through this medium”. Public speaking skills are very important in when an individual is about to speak in front of large crowds like seminars and conferences or in formal meetings to express their opinions regarding current issues.

Tom et al. (2013) found to that amount the level over communication apprehension amongst the remaining year of Bachelor regarding Business Administration students was once very high. They discovered so 45% of the students have scores beyond 80. Additionally, students who disliked taking part of public speaking get anxious easily and involve themselves with group discussions. This is consistent with Raja (2013) student feared public speaking or not was that more than 75% of them surveyed feared speaking in front of an audience. Thus, the majority of them were found to be afraid of speaking in front of others, which is consistent with McCain (2012) results that showed that, “Nearly 90% of people reported feeling shy or uncomfortable speaking in front of others at some time in their lives”. That is why students with high communication apprehension tend to avoid mass lecture classes or speaking in front of an audience.

Learning Styles

Students must stand after independent learners. Knowledge and problem solving skills address the capabilities of an individual in employability and collaborating with other people is a must for future professionals to keep learning. IES 3 prescribes the education results for professional advantage that aspiring professional accountants are required to demonstrate through the end of Initial Professional Development. Professional skills are the: (a) Intellectual, (b) Interpersonal and communication, (c) Personal, and (d) Organizational skills.

Up to expectation a professional accountant integrates including technical competence then professional values, ethics, and attitudes in imitation of reveal expert competence. Bridges, Herrin, Swart & McConnell (2014) suggests that remarkable lesson styles are important, however, they grant no unique information of education styles or study style preferences. The paradox nature concerning lesson patterns infers that college students are subsequently one type concerning student then every other. College students assume greater stage regarding about their accountability with personal plans and achieving it after graduation, but in accordance with the provisions, they must stay as active participants in terms of learning and communication. Spoken communication skills taught at English language institutes acts as a second language. Correspondingly CA might also shape an obstacle that stops the development regarding students’ communication skills. Anxiety perform of deep situations stops successful overall performance yet over epoch may additionally shape a barrier in imitation of after overall performance and improvement.

Avoidant Style

An individual who has an avoidant style of learning behavior dislikes to be in the classroom and does not like participating in the activities within the things sordid college students and the professor do the classroom. In general, those students are not interested in the things happening inside the classroom. Additionally, Rollins (2015) stated those who students who have an Avoidant learning style usually turn to drop out from school or would prefer no tests, blanket grades or students will get the same grades. A study found that the avoidant learning style falls on the moderate range.

Collaborative Style

An individual with collaborative style likes to interact with other students, sharing their ideas and opinions and working with the other students inside the classroom in groups. They want to study with other students in group discussions and student-designed factors over courses. Corbin (2017) obtained a result that indicates Collaborative was the only learning style that was rated within the high range.

Competitive Style

Individuals with competitive style examine the content including the purpose of having better overall performance than the other college students inside the classroom. These college students perceive that they must persuade themselves in achieving the goal and compete with the other students in the classroom to get rewards. Rollins (2015) stated that an individual with Competitive Learning style pick to that amount he would come to be a crew leader in discussions, Teacher founded instructional procedures, Singled out within classification for doing an honest job, Like in imitation of manage discussions, Class activities the place that may slave higher than others. Therefore, Russ (2012) highlights the relationship between Communication Apprehension and Learning Style Preferences that results from the previous studies: Students with low CA shows that they prefer active experimentation learning style. This indicates that students who have low CA prefer learning by doing and they feel comfortable communicating with other individuals. However, students with high CA show that they prefer reflective observation learning style. Arquero, Polvillo, Hassall & Joyce, (2017) stated, there is a positive relationship between communication apprehension and learning style preferences. Also, collaborative learning style and CA has a negative correlation; while avoidant learning style has a positive significant relationship towards communication apprehension.

The relationship between attitudes and achievement is clear in these studies. High communication apprehensive achieves less and like school less than low communication apprehensive. Both high and low communication apprehensive indicates a preference for the type of class that they do best in. In Gustave Le Bon’s Contagion theory, he expressed contagion effect on social and political opinions. He just explained crowd influence but not crowd’s influence on individuals, which was later added by Robert Park and Herbert Blumer. The theory says that ideas or behavior transfers through and from his network and can be unreasonable and inconsistent for a brief amount of time. The effect again goes away if the person leaves the crowd.

According to Kolb’s experiential learning theory, it works on two levels: a four stage cycle of learning and four separate learning styles. It predicts an individual learns by a recurring cycle of four learning modes: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. This involves directing personal growth of an individual by allowing them to plan and put into application the knowledge they have gained during the concrete experience mode and the four learning styles; diverging, assimilating, and converging, accommodating. This type of learning can be defined as "the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combinations of grasping and transforming the experience."