STUDENTS’ APPREHENSION IN CLASS PARTICIPATION AND FAMILY COMMUNICATION

Being an active student in school motivates a student to be more confident in performing their activities. Somehow, not all the students are confident to show their capabilities in performing in class because they feel apprehended due to some factors such as their communication in their families. This study determines the correlation between the family communication at home and the apprehension in the class participation of the Senior High School students in a certain school of Mandaue City. This study uses descriptive design with checklist scaling questionnaire as being used for gathering data. After the data were being gathered, the data were then analyzed using of weighted mean to determine the level of family communication and the students’ apprehension; chi-square to determine the association between family communication and their apprehensions. Family communication is experienced often. The students’ family members are satisfied of the communication in the family. The students’ family members sometimes can express their feelings and ideas among themselves. While the level of students’ apprehension in their class participation is experienced sometimes, students feel comfortable of communicating in class. In addition, students who dislike participating in group discussions seldom experienced apprehension. Finally, students’ apprehension is significantly associated to family communication.


Introduction
A students' responsibility is to educate one's self, most probably by going to school everyday. To develop one's skills and knowledge is to actively engage in class participation. Somehow, not all students have the confidence to do so, while some students find it easy to share their knowledge in front of everyone.
Students in a classroom may have range from passive to active participations that can be influenced by four factors in student engagement such as, skills and participation, emotional engagement and performance engagement [1]. More specifically, participation is very essential in learning process. Participation also becomes less due to students' influence with cognitive affective, linguistic or the environment, socio cultural [2] and family functioning. Meanwhile, family functioning is the involvement of parents in students' school activities. It may have the influences on child's activeness and passiveness in participating in school activities. Specifically, the language used in the family and the communication at home is very beneficial because it channels between the development of child's activeness and confidence in class participation of students especially in oral recitations.
Involvement of family somehow affects child's development and behavior problems in two dimensions on child rearing and that is support and control with support as the parental behavior. Through support, it makes the child feel comfortable, accepted and approved [3].
All students have the desire to be able to participate in class. Students who are not able to participate are not socially deficient, but they are just afraid to speak up. This is why communication at home influences students in their activeness and the level of their apprehensions at school. Relatively, a certain school in Mandaue City has the characteristics in terms of class participation. It has been observed that there are students who are passively participating in class.
Likewise, the study aims to determine to know whether family communication affects the students' participation in class and their level of apprehension.
Specifically, the study seeks to answer the following sub problems: 1) What is the level of apprehensions of students in participation in class?
2) To what extent does the level of family communication at home manifest? 3) Does family communication associate the students' apprehension in class participation?

Literature Review
Teachers have a crucial part to a child's learning process and development. Teachers and lecturers helps a child mold and grow their characters and minds. It is said that in order for the learning process to be effective, it is important to have an effective participation and communication from the teacher and the student in their activities. In addition, lecturers that understand a student's behavior during class participation can distinguish between a passive and an active learner. By this, teachers can also make ways to help their students encourage participating actively [2]. Communication plays an important role in a child's development in terms of speaking proficiency. Some students were not able to speak English due to some factors that discouraged them to speak while others feel competent because they know how to speak English language [4]. This is why having oral communication skills are important for students because of the fact that it is highly appreciated in the workforce and in any professions [5: 6] but having such skill can also be apprehensive. Participation seem to be a positive behavior of a student that determines an active participation in class but it can also be apprehensive to some student because of the face-threat climate that may happen due to the student-relationship building inside the classroom. Instructors can encourage participation among low to moderate apprehensive students through a positive interpersonal relationship and prevention of face threat [7]. Also, instructors can also help students to gain confidence by acknowledging their achievements in participating [8]. In addition, students who engage more in positive relationship with their teachers are most likely to have less fear and anxiety in their class activities and produce more confidence in speaking English [9].
Communication apprehension became difficult for students because of the symptoms of anxiety showing during their class participation. The more the students feel anxious and apprehensive the more they will have difficulties in concentrating in their classes. Students experienced this kind of symptoms because of having fear to get negative feedbacks from their instructors and also due to the lack of proficiency in vocabulary [6]. On one hand, some at-risk students are more apprehensive and less competent when speaking in groups than norm group. Having apprehension in speaking in groups and the lack of skills to socialize and talk to strangers can affect students' academic success [10].
Similarly, the absence in communication can be a hindrance to one's success in school and to work. It is said that communication apprehension might bring success academically and professionally by having emotional engagement in class positively that can help them in learning [11; 1]. It is also found that the level of oral communication of students also influence their academic performances. The higher the level of apprehension of students experience the lower their academic performances are. In contrast, when they experienced less apprehension they have higher academic performances [12].
Since, communication apprehension affects students' academic and professional success, family communication also contributes to students' apprehension in their classes. Family is the most important element children can have. Family is said to be the single unit to cure illness and mental disorders and it is best for health care for its family members [13]. In this case, communication among the members of the family is an essential value for the children in developing their social and mental abilities [14]. The communication between parents and children can improve their children's skills in communicating with other people. Parents who interact more with their children tend to have openly let their children speak and encourage them to communicate and express their feelings, thus, parents will also learn to listen to their children. It is very essential for a parent and child to have communication in order to have a good relationship and through communication parents can give important values they want for their child to acquire [15].
Students in Hawaii mastered the language of Hawaiian and English which break the stereotype of having bad effects of bilingualism [16]. Teachers must encourage their students to participate in class actively because having active interaction between teachers and their students provides a healthy communication in the classroom [17].
Family functioning and child behavior problem are associated as they influence each other and are influenced by each other in a complicated system [3]. Unfortunately, students with poor family function are academically and behaviorally low [18]. In contrary, families who have a strong foundation of communication and family support have children who have good academic status and have positive self-concept which helps develop their personality and career. Also, having a good parental support from their families can also influence their children academic performances positively [19] which enable their children to reach higher levels of academic status [20].
The factor that affects students' low academic status is the family environment and the adjustment of student in their school. It is believed that parents play a vital role on their children's psychological stability in adjusting their environment to their school [21]. Similarly, parental relations can also affect students' academic status as well as mental illness and parental negligence [22]. Communication interaction between parents of children can improve children's development as it can prevent from having high level of delinquency if it can experience parental satisfactory [23]. Parents who actively engage and monitor their children's activities in school and giving motivational support greatly influenced their children's academic performance ( [24].
To be enlightened of the condition of the senior high school students, the researcher believed to assess the association between family relations and family communication.

Study Framework
Family communication is an essential factor for the family as it needs intersubjectivity and interactivity as described in the theory of Family Communication Theory: A Social Cognitive Approach developed by Ascan F. Koerner and Mary Anne Fritzpatrick in 2006 [25].
Likewise, family communication is also based on the intrapersonal and interpersonal processes between the members of the family. Thus, intrapersonal explains intersubjectivity as it is the connection or the similarly of the relational cognition between the members of the family. Meanwhile, interpersonal explains interactivity since it defines the creation and the interpretation of the symbols used in communicating between the members of the family.
Also, in this theory, it tackles on four different types of family patterns namely: Consensual Families, Pluralistic Families, Protective Families and Laissez-Faire Families. Consensual Families are the type of families that are high in communication and conformity. The communication between members of the family is very valuable as parents listens and accepts the opinions of their children. Though, they may accept their children's opinions, as a parent, they must also make decisions and let their children understand about the decision they make for the family. In this way, children will learn to appreciate family conversations and to be independent, which enhances their capability of communicating and the ability of capacity of making their own decisions. Meanwhile, Pluralistic Families have the high communication but are low in conformity. It is because parents in these types of families' value opinions of their children. They let their children partake in the decision-making. Somehow, communication is very open and wide to various topics and conversations because they are free to express their opinions inside their families. In this way, conflicts are very avoidable and children will learn to value communication.
Also, it will help them boost their confidence in decision-making. Protective Families, on the other hand, have the low communication but with conformity. These types of families believe that the members of the family must act according to the norms and interest in their families. Parents also believe that the opinions of their children are not important. Thus, communication is not important. In this situation, children will learn that communication is not valued in the family resulting to lack of communication skills and distrusting their own decision-making. Families with very low communication and no conformity are called Laissez-Faire Families. Parents and children in these families are emotionally disassociated with each other. They believe that they must make decisions on their own. Also, parents don't care about their children's opinions. Family conversation is very low thus, conflicts are very rare and hey also avoid colliding their interest to one another. In this case, children will learn that communication in family conversations are less valued. On the other hand, they will be able to make their own decisions but they will always doubt it.
There are many types of family patterns that may help or hinder a child's communication skills and confidence in decision-making inside their home. In relation to class participation, students who have families like Protective and Laissez-Faire Families may have the higher chances of being passive in class activities and also lacks confidence in deciding whether to participate or not. This may also cause their communication apprehension in class activities.
Therefore, family communication is an essential factor in influencing students' activeness and passiveness in their school activities. A child's behavior and attitude towards the things that surrounds his or her is determined by the kind of family a child has as everything stats within the family. It helps students to be more active in school. A communication between parents and children could make an individual be more confident and stronger in every apprehension as they already build strong bond and self-confidence in themselves.

Design
This research study will use a Descriptive Design of the variables to determine the significant relationship between the family communication and their level of apprehension in class participation.

Environment
The study will be conducted in a certain senior high school of Mandaue City offering different strands namely: Accountancy, Business and Management (ABM), Humanities and Social Sciences (HUMSS), General Academic Strand (GAS), Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and Technical Vocational and Livelihood-Drafting (TVL-D).

Respondents
The respondents of this research study are the Grade 11 and Grade 12 Senior High School students from each strand (GAS, HUMSS, ABM, STEM, and TVL-D) using complete enumeration. Out of 250, 218 students conceded to answer the questionnaire.

Instruments
The research study will use Checklist Scaling Questionnaire as research instrument which adopted from the study of Rivadeneira and Lopez (2017) in gathering the data for family communication and the study of Watsons (1990) for the apprehension in class participation. Checklist Scaling Questionnaire is used for this study for it is the appropriate tool in a quantitative research. Checklist Scaling Questionnaire is a set o questionnaires given to the respondents wherein they will rate the following questions by checking it, (5) for always, (4) for often, (3) for sometimes, (2) for seldom and (1) for never.

Data Gathering Procedure
The researcher will ask permission to the students to be their respondents and also will ask permission to the principal to conduct a research with the help of a letter of consent signed by the teachers and the principal. The researcher will distribute the questionnaires to the respondents. After distributing, the researcher will give time for the respondents to answer. After answering, the researcher will collect the questionnaires and will give an appreciation for cooperating. The researcher's collected data will be the basis of their analysis, interpretation, conclusions, findings and recommendation for their study. Ethical considerations were profoundly observed.

Statistical Treatment
The researcher will use the weighted mean to determine the level of students' apprehension and their family communication and chi-square for interpreting the collected data by adding the ratings of the respondents individually. The table above revealed to have an overall weighted mean of 3.53 that indicates the level of family communication among students is often. The statement "The members of my family are satisfied with the way we communicate." are indicators that has a weighted mean of 3.90 and is labeled as often is the highest or the main indicator of determining the students' level of family communication. The statement "We enjoy spending time together." is an indicator that has a weighted mean of 3.87 and is also labeled as often is the second highest indicators of the level of family communication while the statement "The members of my family discuss feelings and ideas between themselves." is an indicator with an overall weighted mean of 3.18 and is labeled as sometimes signifies that students' communication inside the family are not well expressed and is the least indicator on the level of family communication. And also the statement "In our family we share feelings openly." has a weighted mean of 3.20 and is labeled as sometimes is the second least indicator of the level of family communication.

Results and Discussions
Family communication is essential for children because it can help in improving their mental and social development [14]. In addition, children who have poor family communication are academically and behaviorally low [18]. Finally, children experiencing parental satisfactory can influence children's delinquent behavior [23]. In the able above, it can be gleaned that it has an overall weighted mean of 3.08 which signifies the overall students' level of apprehension in their class participation is labeled as sometimes. The statement "Communicating at class usually makes me feel comfortable." is an indicator with a weighted mean of 3.50 and is labeled as often is the highest indicator that determines the students' level of apprehension in class participation. The statement "I like to get involved in group discussions." has a weighted mean of 3.47 and is labeled as often is the second highest indicator of the level of students' apprehension and also the statement "Generally, I am comfortable while participating in group discussions." Is an indicator with a weighted men of 3.45 and is labeled as often is the third indicator with the highest mean of the students' level of apprehension while, the statement "I dislike participating in group discussions." Is an indicator with a weighted mean of 2.39 and is labeled as seldom is the least indicator that determines that students' level of apprehension is low. The statement "I feel relaxed while giving a speech." has a weighted mean of 2.68 and is labeled as sometimes is the second indicator with the lowest weighed mean and the statement "I have no fear of giving a speech." is an indicator that has weighted mean of 2.78 and is also labeled as sometimes is the third indicator with the least weighed mean of students" level of apprehension in class participation. Having positive relationship with teachers and classmates decreases the anxiety and fear of the students to participate, thus, makes them comfortable to talk in class [9; 7; 2]. a. 1620 cells (100.0%) have expected count less than 5. the minimum expected count is .00.
The table above shows that the p-value (0.003) is lesser than the significant alpha (0.05), thus, rejecting the null hypothesis. It can be inferred that there is a significant association between the students' level of apprehension in class participation and their level of family communication.
Thus, parents' involvement in their children academic performance is highly significant. [22] Observed the same result that family relations are significantly to children's academic performance. In addition, having a strong and positive communication and parental support from the family increases children's academic performance and develop their personality and career [19]. Communication among the members the family helps improves their children to express their feelings and communicate with other people effectively [15].

Conclusions and Recommendations
The senior high school students' level of apprehension is experienced often. On one hand, the second table shows that the students' level of family communication of the senior high school students is experienced sometimes. Finally, there is a significant association between students' level of apprehension in class participation and their level of family communication. The null hypothesis which is "There is no significant association between the extent of family communication at home and students' level of apprehension in class participation" is rejected because the computed value of the chi-square is less than the significant alpha (.05).
Engaging actively in class participation is every teacher's responsibility for students to have a healthy and active interaction among them. Also, having an active interaction inside the classroom helps students to improve their communication skills and reach their educational attainment. Unfortunately, some students feel nervous and anxious when speaking in class and joining in discussions and prefer to just listen and watch their teacher talk. In this case, family communication is variable in determining the students' apprehension in their class participation whether they actively or passively participate. Students' apprehensive behavior highly depends on the communication of the family on how the students perform in their classes. No matter what behavioral action the children express in their classes: passive or active, it is associated with the way their family communicated at home.
Based on the findings and discussions of the study, the following are recommended: 1) A monthly school based seminar should be done for the students who have problem with the apprehension will be tackled on for a student's have a better academic performance.
2) The school teachers should have one on one talk with their students of Jagobiao National High School, who have apprehensive problem for them to encourage in participating in class.
3) The school teachers should give a reward to every student who has participates in class to increase the confidence of students in participating in class.
application of the courses that helped us improved our skills and to pursue in making this research study.
Mrs. Juvy M. Sosas, the school head, for allowing the researcher to gather and collect data among the students of Jagobiao National High School-Senior High School Department. Parents of the Researchers, for giving the researcher their unending support and patience, for understanding them in valuing their time used in the research study, for giving them inspirations and motivations to finish the research study and for supporting the researcher especially when it comes to financial assistance. The Respondents, the researcher's fellow students and friends at Jagobiao National High School for allotting their time and patience for the researcher to gather and collect information needed for the research study; and Most especially, the God of Almighty, for giving the researcher strength, focus and determination and for enlightening the researcher's heart and mind to being considerate and diligent at all times whenever one's do the research study.

Appendices
Personal Information Name: __________________________ Grade & Section: _________________ Direction: Please answer the following items with all honesty. The data gathered will be held with utmost confidentiality. A. Check the following whether it is: Part 2: Apprehension in Class Participation STATEMENTS 5 4 3 2 1 1 I dislike participating in group discussions. 2 Generally, I am comfortable while participating in group discussions. 3 I am tense and nervous while participating in group discussions. 4 I like to get involved in group discussions. 5 Engaging in group discussions with new people makes me tense and nervous. 6 I am calm and relaxed while participating in a group discussion. 7 Generally, I am nervous when I have to participate in a meeting. 8 Usually, I am calm and relaxed while participating in a meeting. 9 I am very calm and relaxed when I am called upon to express myself at meeting. 10 I am afraid to express myself at meeting. 11 Communicating at meetings usually makes me feel comfortable. 12 I am very relaxed when answering questions at a meeting. 13 While participating in a conversation with a new acquaintance, I feel very nervous. 14 I have no fear of speaking up in conversations. 15 Ordinarily, I am very tense and nervous in conversations. 16 Ordinarily, I am very calm and relaxed in conversation. 17 While conversing with a new acquaintance, I feel very relaxed. 18 I'm afraid to speak up in conversations. 19 I have no fear of giving a speech. 20 Certain parts of my body feel very tense and rigid while I am giving a speech. 21 I feel relaxed while giving a speech. 22 My thoughts become confused and jumbled when I am giving a speech. 23 I face the prospect of giving a speech with confidence. 24 While giving a speech, I get so nervous I forgot facts I really know. Note: This research instrument was adapted in the research study of Watson (1990) titled "Helping Developmental Students Overcome Communication Apprehension".