attitide anxiety bolouri

Anxiety in SLAMaryam Bolouri

Significance of Anxiety

• Dörnyei (2005) claimed that “there is no doubt that anxiety affects L2 performance

• Arnold and Brown (1999), Anxiety is generally seen as the affective factor that most frequently hinders the learning process.

What is Anxiety?

• It is intertwined with self-esteem, self efficacy, inhibition and risk taking.

• it is not only difficult to define it but to study it systematically because:

1. Learners are individualistic and changeable.

2. Affective states are volatile and affect not only overall progress but responses to particular learning activities on a day by day or moment by moment basis.

Anxiety definition • Spielberger (1983): “the subjective feeling of

tension, apprehension, nervousness, worry associated with an arousal of the automatic nervous system”

• Scovel (1978): feeling of uneasiness, frustration, self-doubt, apprehension or worry

• Dornyei (2012): there is a general uncertainty about the broader categorization of this concept:

1. It refers to a motivational component2. Or it is a part of personality trait 3. It is often mentioned as one of the basic

emotions

Anxiety definition

• Schunk (2000):Anxiety has both cognitive and affective components:

1. Cognitive side: worry and negative thought and prediction some failure or negative events

2. Affective side: it involves physiological elements such as : sweaty palms, upset stomach, racing heartbeats or emotional reaction such as fear

Anxiety Types

1. Trait anxiety: permanent predisposition to be anxious

2. State anxiety: : it is experienced at a particular moment in time as a response to definite situation

3. Situation specific anxiety : it is aroused by a specific type of situation such as public speaking examination, class participation

Language anxiety:

• lg anxiety it is a specific situation anxiety that associates with attempts to learn L2 and communicate in it.

• High-anxiety foreign language students exhibit many symptoms:

1. freezing up when asked to say something in the L2 in front of the class

2. Blanking on the right answers during a language test despite having studied hard and even knowing the answers.

Language anxiety:

• Gregerson (2003) observed that anxious language learners

1. Make more errors2. Overestimate the number of their

errors3. Self correct more than less anxious

learners

Components of language anxiety:

:1. Communication apprehension: arises

from learner inability to adequately express mature thoughts and ideas

2. Fear of negative social evaluation: arises from learner’s need to make a positive social impression on others

3. Test anxiety over academic evaluation

• Self worth• Intelligence (Bailey, Onwuegbuzie, & Daley. 2000)• Learners’ competitive nature • Perceived relationship with teacher• Test and measurement tools• Teacher’s classroom management competency• Fear of losing oneself in the target culture- identity conflict • perfectionism, set unrealistically high standards

(Gregerson and Horwits ,2002)• Counterproductive beliefs about language

learning(Horwitz,1988) Misguided myths about language learning

Questions1: what causes state or situ anxiety?

Oxford (1992) listed the affective states that are associated with this anxiety:

Emotional regression, self pityAnger, sadnessIndecisionAlienationReduced personality

Scales of anxiety:

1. Gardner and Smythe (1975): French class anxiety scale and English test anxiety

2. Horwits, Horwits and Cope (1986): foreign lg anxiety scale (33 5point Likert scale items)

• ‘Even if I am not well prepared for language class, I feel anxious about it’

• ‘I always feel that the other students speak the foreign language better than I do’.

• MacIntyre and Gardner (1994): Input, Processing and Output Anxiety Scales (IPOAS) 18 five-point Likert scale items

Input, Processing and Output Anxiety Scales (IPOAS)MacIntyre and Gardner (1994)

• Input stage of encountering aural or written input (‘I get flustered unless French is spoken very slowly and deliberately’),

• Processing stage of comprehending messages and figuring out words and meanings (‘I am anxious with French because, no matter how hard I try, I have trouble understanding it’)

• Output stage of producing evidence of what one has learned and can do in speaking or writing (‘I may know the proper French expression but when I am nervous it just won’t come out’).

Question 2: what effect does anxiety have on learning?

• It affects three stages of learning:1. Input2. Processing3. Output • most studies have focused on the effect on

output and little is known about the influence of anxiety on input and processing

There are several reasons for this mixed result:

1) Curvilinear relationship:The relationship btw them probably is not

linear one. It has a curvilinear effect on performance

2) types of anxiety:Alpert and Haber (1960) distinction btw

facilitation and debilitating anxiety3) Sometimes these two types cancel out each

other so the apparent result is no achievement

2 dimensions of anxiety• Dornyei (2005): there are 2 dimensions to

understand anxiety:• 1) Beneficial vs. inhibitory anxiety:• this dichotomy refers to whether or not anxiety

can be a positive or negative force• Williams (1991) it is related to the intensity of

anxiety:• Low-anxiety state has a facilitating role • High-anxiety state has a debilitating effect.• 2) Trait vs. state anxiety:• this refers to whether anxiety is a part of

individuals make up across many situations or is a reaction in a particular situation

A model to account for the role anxiety in lg learning

• MacIntyre and Gardner (1991b) proposed a model that

• anxiety -----------------------------------learning

Learning Anxiety

According to this model:

1. Poor performance can be the cause as well as the result of anxiety (in line with Skehan’s findings, 1989)

2. There is sufficient evidence that anxiety is an important factor in SLA

3. It cannot be seen as a factor that its presence or absence leads to success or failure in SLA but a factor that contribute in different degrees in different learners

Sigmund Tobias (1985)Suggested a model to explain how anxiety interferes at 3 points in the learning and performance cycle

• Attention: highly anxious learners divide the attention btw new material and nervous feelings

• Learning: if they pay attention, they have still problems in learning

• use of memory, distraction, poor strategies and habits

• Testing: the often know more than they can demonstrate on tests so they may lack test taking skills

The questions that has not been answered adequately are:1. Under What condition the anxiety has

an effect on lg learning?2. How can anxiety be measured

adequately based on somatic response rather that self report questionnaire?

3. Is anxiety the cause of poor performance in SLA or the product of less satisfactory performance ?

LDCH hypothesis:• Anxiety is the result of 1) Foreign lg learning difficulties2) First lg deficits

Other disagree with LDCH because:3) Raised strong objection to the validity of the

argument4) Anxiety is the common source of interference in

all kinds of learning5) Highly proficient lg learners experience anxiety6) over one third of lg learners reported forms of

anxiety it seems highly implausible to attribute anxiety to L1 deficits

Implications in ELT:

1. Hoffman (1986): anxiety can direct attention away from meaning and toward pure form or physical features of words such as acoustic properties, order of presentation, and phonetic similarities

So when meaningful use of language is important anxiety can be a negative factor

2. Teachers should try to determine whether a student’s anxiety stems from a more global trait or from a particular situation at the moment. (both too much or too little anxiety may hinder the process of SLA


3. Class should promote low anxiety and non-defensive posture among learners, where they don’t feel they are in a competition with one another

4. Teachers should identify learners with poor studying skills and learning strategies and try to equip them with useful ones.

5. Teachers should identify those “freeze and forget” learners and present test taking skills in class.


6. Teachers should guide anxious students to set appropriate short and long term goals with goal cards, progress chart, or goal planning journals.

7. If possible eliminate time limits on important tests because high anxiety learners work too quickly or slowly

8. Learners can use 3 kinds of coping strategies:

A. Problem solving: plan a study schedule, borrow good notes, find a protected place to study

B. Emotional management: to reduce anxious feelings by relaxation strategies, or describing the feeling to a friend

C. Avoidance: go out with a friend, do some chores

Learners’ attitudes

Where do they come from?

• It is the result of parents or peers’ attitudes of contact with people who are different in a number of ways

• Attitude develops early in childhood• They form a part of person’s perception of self,

others, and the culture in which he is living• Stereotyping implies some attitude toward the

culture or lg

Pioneers in this field:

• Gardner and lamberts studied extensively the effect of attitude on lg learning and after studying the interrelationship they defined:

• 1) motivation is made up of certain attitude• 2) Positive attitude toward a nationality is a

desire to understand them and to empathize with them

• 3) it will lead to an integrative orientation to learn their lg

• Biased attitude are based on:

• Insufficient knowledge• Misinformed stereotyping• Extreme ethnocentric thinking

Social distance:

• Learners do not feel an affinity with L2 speakers

• It creates a psychological and social distance from speakers of L2

• The immediate consequence is diminished amount of data

Schumann’s (1978) acculturation model.• Acculturation is made up of:1. Social variablesThe extent of dominance over the other

group (dominant, non-dominant, subordinate)

for instance colonization or immigrationThe extent of integration (assimilation or

emphasis on preserving one’s own lifestyle and lg) degree of disclosure

2. Affective variables

Schumann’s (1978) acculturation model• Cohesiveness (size of the L2 group)• Congruence: similar in values and beliefs

systems• Permanence: intended length of residence in

the target lg area• These factors describe good or bad lg

learning situations• The greater the distance-> the greater the

difficulty the learner will have in SLA

Problems with Schumann’s model:

• It is difficult to accept that acculturation is the causal variable in SLA.

• There may be many other variable that interact with it such as personality variables

• these variables can set the stage for learning but not causing learning

Attitude and motivation

• In the field of L2 motivation, attitudes have been identified as emotional precursors of the initiation of learning behavior.

• It is partly derived from one’s self-appraisal (Skaalvik 1997).

• Bong and Skaalvik (2003) argue that this affective dimension of one’s self-efficacy has important motivating power.

• it is also suggested that irrespective of age, attitudes to L2 learning have a strong influence on effort and persistence

Dornyei’s (2005) and Kormos et al. (2011) models• language learning attitudes are inter-related

with the Ideal L2 self• four learner-internal factors:• goals, attitudes, self-guides, and self-efficacy

beliefs interact with each other.• self-guides, self-efficacy beliefs, and attitudes

have direct links to goals

Dornyei’s (2005) and Kormos et al. (2011) models• motivated behavior influences effort and

persistence in language learning through the mediation of attitudes and self-related beliefs.

• learners are situated in the systems of their social, cultural, and instructional setting and these external factors influence the components of learner internal motivation.

Implication for ELT:

• Second lg learners benefit from positive attitude and negative attitude may lead to decreased motivation

• Negative attitude can be changed often by exposure to reality or interaction with actual persons.

• Negative attitude emerges from one’s indirect exposure to a culture or group through TV, movies, news, media, books that may be less reliable

Implication for ELT:

• Teachers can dispel myth about other cultures and replace them with an accurate understanding of other cultures.

• So learners move through awareness and value, respect and appreciate foreign culture.

References: • Douglas.H.Brown. (2007). principles of langugae learning

and teaching (5th ed). NY: Pearson Education.• Ellis,R. (1999). The study of second language acquisition • Dornyei, Z. (2012). The psychology of second language

acquisition. NY:Oxford University Press• Gass, S. M., & Selinler, L. (2008). Second Language

Acquisition. NY: Routledge..• Kormos, J. Kiddle, T & Csizer. K. (2011). Systems of Goals,

Attitudes, and Self-related Beliefs in Second-Language- Learning Motivation. Applied Linguistics, 32(5), 495–516

• Ortega, L. (2009). understanding second language acquisition, NY, USA

• Wesley,P. (2012). Learner Attitudes, Perceptions, and Beliefs in Language Learning. Foreign Language Annals, 45(1). pp.98–S117

• Woolfolk, A. E., Winne, P. H., & Perry, N. E. (2003). Educational Psychology (2nd ed.). Toronto: Pearsoon Education