Nomophobia among Esl Learners in Malaysian Higher Learning Institute

The Covid-19 pandemic has intensified the utilization and reliance of ESL learners on various electronic gadgets in assisting their learning processes that have mostly been conducted via online or termed as open distance learning (ODL). The pandemic has ‘forced’ almost all educational institutions to halt physical meetings and induced ODL. This unprecedented phenomena during Covid-19 pandemic have double-edged effects on learners. On one side, it assists and eases the learning processes but on the other side, the learners are ‘forced’ to spend even more time than they already are with their gadgets or smart phones that leads them to fear the situation of being without their smart phones or termed as ‘nomophobia’. This quantitative study is conducted to explore nomophobia among ESL learners using NMP- Q. A total of 114 ESL learners were conveniently selected as respondents. The respondents are mostly active undergraduates with 30% are postgraduates. The questionnaires were administered online, and quantitative data generated from this survey is used to measure respondents’ level of nomophobia, investigate gender differences as the correlation between respondents’ level of English language and their level of nomophobia and to determine the main factor(s) leading to nomophobia. The results show that majority of respondents fall under ‘Moderate’ nomophobia with close to 30% of them are under ‘Severe’. The study also confirmed that gender and the level of English language are not the determining factors of severeness of nomophobia. Finally, having no access to information is the main factor contributing to nomophobia.