The Role Of Anxiety In Language Learning

(Aida,1994,Chastien,1975,MacIntyre and Garder1989,Philips,1992) have conducted several studies on language anxiety and its different effects on the learning performance. Indeed learning a foreign language is a complex and frightening experience because it requires concentration and motivated learners. From 1970’s till nowadays researchers are studying how anxiety affects language learning and the effects were trying to define the relationship between anxiety and foreign language ,their findings have shown that there is a negative relation between FL anxiety and the level of achievement .

According to MacIntyre 1999 foreign language learning anxiety is “worry and negative emotional reaction aroused when learning or using a second language”

Campelle Ortiz (1991) affirms that the majority of the language students face a frightening level of anxiety specifically when they are expected to perform in FL/SL because of several reasons (psychological problems, fear of making mistakes) and it dependent on the learners differences generally that feeling is considered by the learners as an implicit problem which they sometimes are not aware that anxiety hold up their

Fear of negative evaluation: defined by Horwitz and Young as the fear and worry of the individual about what others think of him and misjudge his behavior .Students fear of negative evaluation in any classroom situation where they are evaluated by the teacher. Anxious students already have some expectations that their peers will evaluate them negatively so they become sensitive in any evaluative situation. Although the learning process requires a regular evaluation, it resembles to test anxiety because it’s not limited to specific situation. Test anxiety can manifest also in social cases as an interview for a job, in the same context MacIntyre and Gardner (1991) suggested that fear of negative evaluation is related to communicative apprehension because when students are not sure of what they will say by worrying about making mistakes in front of their peers as consequence they don’t participate