Foreign Language Anxiety Research

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Foreign language anxiety has drawn great attention in second and foreign language study over the last several decades (Trang, 2012) because of the particular nature of foreign language and the amount of apprehension and fear related to learning foreign languages (Horwitz. Horwitz, and Cope 1986). In general academic anxiety can be defined as collection of anxieties learners experience while in schools (Cassady, 2010). In addition, Zhang (2001) defined anxiety as the psychological tension that the learner goes through in performing a learning task. Likewise, Scovel (1978) defined anxiety as a state of the individual when he/she feels frustration, uneasiness, apprehension, self-doubt, or worry.
In particular, Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) is …show more content…

(Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope, 1986, MacIntyre, 1995). In contrast, Sparks and Ganschow (1995) investigated whether anxiety causes the language anxiety or language difficulty causes anxiety. In different researches, Sparks and Ganschow (1991, 1993a, 1993b, 2007) report that it is uncertain to pledge the importance attributed to language anxiety in learning the foreign language. According to MacIntyre (1995), the relationship between task performance and anxiety is cyclical one, each construct leads to the other.
In addition, it was proved (Howritz and Young, 1991) that foreign language anxiety is closely associated with problems in language learning such as shortage in listening comprehension, impaired vocabulary learning, reduced word production, lower scores on standardized tests, and lower grades in language …show more content…

One of the studies is carried out by Awan et al., (2010) who researched students' achievement in its relationship with foreign language classroom anxiety. It is pointed out that achievement and language anxiety are negatively related to each other. It is also found that male students are more anxious in learning English as a foreign language than female students. Speaking in front of others is assessed as the biggest cause of anxiety followed by being unable to talk spontaneously worries about grammatical mistakes, and pronunciation.
In addition, Dordinejad and Ahmadabad (2014) researched the relationship between English language achievement and foreign language classroom anxiety among female and male high school students in Iran. English language achievement was found to be significantly and negatively correlated with Foreign language classroom anxiety. Males were found to be less anxious than their female

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