MacIntyre (1999) defined language anxiety as follows:
“the apprehension experienced when a situation requires the use of a second language with which the individual is not fully proficient … the propensity for an individual to react in a nervous manner when speaking, listening, reading, or writing in the second language. (p. 5)
Scovel (1978) defines anxiety in language learning as ‘a state of apprehension, a vague fear’ (p. 134). And Hurd (2007) believes that “language anxiety has become central to any examination of factors contributing to learning process and learner achievement” (p. 488).
In contrast to trait anxiety (stable disposition) or state anxiety (transient, “moment-by-moment” experience), language anxiety constitutes a specific kind of anxiety, aroused by situational factors such as tests, speaking in front of class, and being called on by the teacher (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986; MacIntyre & Gardner, 1989, 1991). In the 1970s and 1980s, language anxiety was examined through studying learner diaries (e.g., Bailey, 1983). Later research made use of specially designed questionnaires.
Language anxiety is considered one of the most important affective factors influencing the success of language learning (Horwitz, 2001). Questionnaire studies have found a significant negative relationship between anxiety and various L2 achievement measures such as final grades and oral proficiency tests (Horwitz & Young, 1991).
A study by MacIntyre and Gardner (1994) is pioneering in this respect. They demonstrated that learner anxiety affected negatively both the ability to perform a language learning task and ultimate L2 achievement. Using a video camera to arouse learners' language anxiety, they compared learners' performances on a computer-based vocabulary learning task. Their findings showed that the learners' exposure to the video camera resulted in heightened state anxiety with subsequent poor performance in vocabulary learning. MacIntyre and Gardner's (1994) study attempted to relate anxiety to a processing model of language acquisition instead of simply examining the relationship between anxiety and achievement.
Based on my classroom observation, Chinese students are comparatively inactive in terms of classroom participation, especially in the activities which are in the form of oral presentation. Actually, there has been a great deal of research on classroom talk, but relatively little of this work has focused on the relationship between language anxiety and classroom talk, or as I have termed it ‘participation’. (Tony Wright, 2005). These issues might include the following: how language anxiety is created or suppressed by the management of the relationship between talk and other classroom artefacts, whether talk regulates or liberates learners’ participation, and how learners manage their language anxiety to classroom activity.
Teachers and learners participate in the lives of classroom learning communities. Classrooms are thus social discourse worlds (Mercer 1995), or communities of practice (Wenger 1998); they are also defined by the way in which social and cultural practices contribute to cultural and intellectual development in the widest sense. The social life of a learning group is initiated, maintained and extended by the multitude of interactions that take place between its members during lessons and outside the classroom too. Consequently, that all the issues here are closely related to Chinese graduate students’ language anxiety in class and a study on these issues are of practical value.
References:
Bailey, K. (1983). Competitiveness and anxiety in adult second language learning: Looking at and through the diary studies. In H.Seliger & M.Long (Eds.), Classroom oriented research in language learning. Rowley , MA : Newbury House.
Horwitz, E. (2001). Language anxiety and achievement. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 21, 112–126.
Horwitz, E., Horwitz, B., & Cope, J. (1986). Foreign language classroom anxiety. Modern Language Journal, 70, 125–132.
MacIntyre, P. (1999). Language anxiety: A review of the research for language teachers. In D. J.Young (Ed.), Affect in foreign language and second language learning (pp. 24–45). Boston : McGraw-Hill.
MacIntyre, P., & Gardner, R. (1989). Anxiety and second language learning: Toward a theoretical clarification. Language Learning, 39, 251–275.