The effects of Neurolinguistic Programming on anxiety, self-esteem, and second language acquisition of high school ELD students

The Problem. The purpose of this study was to identify the effects on Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) on anxiety, self-esteem, and second language acquisition of high school ELD students at a high school located at the border with Mexico.;Method. The design of this study was a combination of quantitative and qualitative research comprised of student inventories and open-ended questionnaires. Data analysis was based on the effects of neurolinguistic programming on the three aforementioned factors of high school ELD students.;Results. Statistics showed that the mean score gains for pre- and post-inventories for the both control and experimental groups on the three variables were positive.;In the case of language anxiety, statistics showed that level of anxiety in both group student participants actually decreased numerically. However, the difference between the gain scores in the experimental group was not significant.;Learning a second or foreign language is a complex cognitive task, and therefore it requires a great deal of self-esteem. T-tests in the statistical analysis in this study indicated that students in the experimental group's self-esteem significantly increased, while the self-esteem in the control group did not.;Findings in the language proficiency test and essay scores revealed that while the two groups did not begin with a similar proficiency level, both groups significantly improved at the end of the treatment period. Nevertheless, the greater language proficiency gains by the experimental group were significantly greater than the control group.;Finally, student participants from the experimental group were given the open-ended perception questionnaire and the reflection paper as NLP treatment at the end of the study.;Students' perceptions and reflections toward NLP on anxiety, self-esteem, and language proficiency as a positive learning experience during the treatment period, which was the analyzed qualitative data.