Defining foreign language anxiety

All people experience anxiety sometimes. According to Cambridge Online Dictionary anxiety is

“an uncomfortable feeling of nervousness or worry about something that is happening or might happen in the future”. In other words, anxiety is an unpleasant state of mind that causes both physical and psychological symptoms. Horwitz et al. report (1986: 125) that anxiety is an obstacle in language learning, and that language anxiety can, for example, be the feeling of freezing when called upon to speak in a language classroom. According to Horwitz et al. (1986: 125) a typical comment from someone who is experiencing FL anxiety is, for instance: "When I'm in my Spanish class I just freeze! I can't think of a thing when my teacher calls on me. My mind goes blank. ".

They (1986: 125) define anxiety as a “subjective feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness and worry associated with an arousal of the autonomic nervous system”. It is important to point out that Horwitz et al. (1986: 128) propose that foreign language anxiety is not merely a combination

of fears transferred to foreign language learning. They believe that it is “a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process” (ibid.). MacIntyre and Gardner (1994: 284) characterize foreign language anxiety “as the feeling of tension and apprehension specifically associated with second language contexts, including speaking, listening, and learning.” According to Pihko (2009: 61) foreign language anxiety is a feeling of anxiety and nervousness related to a foreign language learning situation. Furthermore, according to Young (1991: 430) avoiding eye contact, short answer responses, coming unprepared to class, cutting class, or avoiding having to speak in the foreign language class are some examples of the manifestations of FLA. According to Huang (2012: 9) “the most commonly affected areas [in learning] include communication apprehension, reading comprehension, speaking abilities, communicative skills, listening skills, and writing skills”. Thus, it can be concluded that FLA is a distinct and complex phenomenon that occurs specifically in the language learning or acquisition context, and it affects virtually all aspects of language learning.

Saito et al. (1999: 202) describe FLA as follows: “The essence of FL anxiety, according to Horwitz et al., is the threat to an individual’s self-concept caused by the inherent limitations of communication in an imperfectly mastered second language”. Indeed, a threat to one’s self-concept is what can be found in the core of any feeling of anxiety. When one’s self-concept is threatened, they fear “losing face”. The phenomenon of “losing face” in linguistic research is related to the term proficiency face, which refers to a persons’ aspiration to express their autonomy, ability to co-operate, sense of solidarity, and skills and competencies (Ahvenainen, 2010: 2). When anxiety interferes with a persons’ language production, they are unable to express these aspirations and therefore can lose face. Receiving low evaluations or criticism are an example of this (Huang,

2012: 106). Participants in previous studies have reported experiencing feelings of nervousness or even panic because of the fear of being ridiculed by others in the classroom because of, for example, the wrong choice of words (Gregersen and Horwitz, 2002; Horwitz et al., 1986; Toth 2010). In other words, one dreads errors because of the fear of losing face, which is why they aim for perfection in their language performance. Hence, foreign language anxiety is linked to performance: particularly, the evaluation of academic and, social performance. In reference to this, Horwitz et al. (1986: 127) state the following: “Because foreign language anxiety concerns performance evaluation within an academic and social context, it is useful to draw parallels between it and three related performance anxieties: 1) communication apprehension; 2) test anxiety; and 3) fear of negative evaluation”. These performance anxieties are defined in the following paragraph.

Communication apprehension (1) refers to an individuals’ fears and uncomfortable feelings towards communicating in a foreign language: manifestations of this are the fear of speaking in front of or with others, and the difficulty in understanding spoken language (Horwitz et al., 1986:

127; Gregersen and Horwitz, 2002: 562). These fears and uncomfortable feelings arise when an individual is aware of the fact that they have difficulty in understanding others or making themselves understood (Horwitz et al., 1986: 127). As a result, a student suffering from communication apprehension in a foreign language classroom is likely to avoid communication even if they were otherwise talkative (ibid.). Interestingly, a normally shy and quiet student “may find that communicating in a foreign language makes them feel as if someone else is speaking and they therefore feel less anxious” (Horwitz et al., 1986: 127). Test anxiety (2) derives from the fear of failure (ibid.). Test anxious students dread errors and accept nothing less than perfection in their foreign language test performance and evaluations. As a consequence, they are unable to perceive

foreign language tests as learning opportunities, which is counterproductive from the viewpoint of language learning (Horwitz et al., 1986: 127–128; Gregersen and Horwitz, 2002: 563). The fear of negative evaluation (3) is similar to test anxiety, but it is much broader in the sense that it is not only related to test situations (Horwitz et al., 1986: 128). Language students who suffer from the fear negative evaluations avoid evaluations, have apprehensions towards evaluative situations, and assume that others will give them negative evaluations (ibid.). An example of this is a student who fears being ridiculed because of a pronunciation mistake in a language classroom. The concept of the fear of negative evaluation means that these individuals do not only fear the teachers’ negative evaluations, but all evaluations (e.g. peer evaluations) related to their foreign language performance (Horwitz et al., 1986: 128; Gregersen and Horwitz, 2002: 562–563).

As these characterizations suggest, the manifestations of these performance anxieties overlap to some extent. Still, this tripartition is paramount, as it creates the base for the conceptualization of FLA and lays the groundwork for the methodology behind the measurement tool of FLA, Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) (Horwitz et al., 1986: 128). Based on Horwitz et al.

(1986) three performance anxieties, Huang (2012: 52) presents an alternative categorization of the anxieties: 1) communication apprehension, 2) fear of negative evaluation, and 3) general feelings of anxiety. This categorization, which, in my opinion, better reflects the items of the FLCAS, is applied in the current study. This categorization is discussed in more detail in chapter 2.5.

In conclusion, all of the aforementioned definitions and conceptualizations of FL anxiety share a common ground. Researchers seem to be unanimous on the fact that anxiety causes a reaction in the learner that results to both physical and psychological symptoms. However, researchers have had different views on whether FLA leads to negative or positive outcomes. This has led to the

categorization of two different types of anxiety, debilitating and facilitating anxiety. Furthermore, researchers have categorized anxiety into trait, state, and situation specific anxiety to convey the difference between stable and continual personality related anxiety versus transient and situation-specific anxiety (MacIntyre and Gardner, 1991; Dörnyei, 2005: 198; Toth, 2010: 5). These categorizations are described in more detail in chapter 2.3.