The Causes of Anxiety in Highly Anxious Students in Japanese Communicative EFL Classes

The purpose of this study was to identify the causes of speaking anxiety in highly anxious students, of which their teachers might not have been aware, and solutions to alleviate the problem. Sixteen students from a Japanese language-oriented university participated in an interview survey. The participants’ anxiety levels were measured using a five-point Likert scale questionnaire that included five items related to foreign language classroom anxiety. The results were compared to the results of interviews with their teachers, and interesting responses from the student interviews that their teachers did not raise were highlighted. The main causes of anxiety were an unpleasant classroom environment, peer pressure, and non-ideal class types. Students argued for several strategies to reduce the anxiety associated with speaking practice, increase their use of English, and improve their proficiency. To achieve these strategies, teachers need to take into account the opinions of students they did not previously focus on.

How Classroom Environment and General Grit Predict Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety of Chinese EFL Students

Interest in the role of learners’ personality, emotions and the learning environment in foreign language (FL) learning has grown exponentially in the past decade. The introduction of personality psychology in the field of applied linguistics has led to the inclusion of a set of personality dimensions in research designs like resilience and grit, which have been shown to be significant predictors of FL achievement. The abrupt emergence of COVID-19 in 2020 forced universities around the world to move their courses online, which has been named Emergency Remote Teaching. The sudden change in FL learning environment offers a unique opportunity to researchers to investigate whether the relationships between learners’ personality and classroom emotions in traditional ‘in-person’ classes, and the predictors of those emotions, also exist in the new online environments. The present study examined the foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) of Chinese secondary students at different instruction levels and its links with learner-internal and external factors, namely general grit and the classroom environment (CE) of the online English classes. A total of 1,526 Chinese secondary students completed an online questionnaire. Pearson correlation analyses and regression analyses revealed that general grit and CE predicted FLCA either independently or jointly. The findings are discussed and interpreted in the light of existing research on person-environment interaction. We identify avenues for further research and propose a number of pedagogical implications for optimizing online FL teaching.

THE CORRELATION BETWEEN EFL ANXIETY AND STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION”.

The objective of the current study examined whether there was any significant correlation between foreign language classroom anxiety and students’ reading comprehension. In this regard, hopefully, this study provided English language lecturers to recognize the most provoking factor that affect learning a foreign language, such anxiety and helped students to solve language anxiety to become better English language students. This researcher was conducted at Lakidende University, particularly 32 university students of English Language Teaching Department who enrolled in academic year 2018/2019. The data were obtained from students’ reading comprehension test and questionnaire that is Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) and to analyze the data this study applied Pearson Correlation analysis. The finding revealed that there was a significant relationship between foreign language classroom anxiety and students’ reading comprehension, p (.061) 0.05. Meanwhile, the strength of correlation between reading anxiety and students’ reading comprehension was categorized “moderate” according to table Guidelines of Interpreting Pearson's Correlation Coefficient (r =.381). It might be the fact that most of students frequently experienced moderate level of foreign language classroom anxiety in their reading comprehension class.

Validating the Short-Form Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (S-FLCAS)

Foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) is a popular construct in applied linguistics research, traditionally measured with the 33-item Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS). However, recent studies have started utilising the 8-item Short-Form Foreign Language Anxiety Scale (S-FLCAS). There is therefore a need, which this study addressed in five sequential steps, to validate the S-FLCAS in order to ensure the validity and reliability of the scale. A sample of n = 370 foreign language learners was utilised in the validation efforts, which included exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, the establishment of convergent and discriminant validity, and invariance testing. The S-FLCAS was found to have a unidimensional structure with the 8 items loading on a single latent variable. Evidence was provided of the internal consistency and the convergent and discriminate validity of the S-FLCAS. In addition, the measure was found to be fully invariant across age, gender, educational levels, and L1 groups. It is therefore with some considerable confidence that we can recommend the future use of the S-FLCAS in peer-reviewed research.

Influencia de la ansiedad en el aprendizaje del idioma inglés como lengua extranjera en estudiantes de educación superior

La presente investigación tuvo como objetivo determinar el nivel de ansiedad frente al aprendizaje de una lengua extranjera, como el caso del idioma inglés, por lo que se consideró como referencia a 37 estudiantes de un instituto de educación superior de Lima, Perú. La muestra la conformaron mujeres y varones. Los instrumentos utilizados fueron: The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) para evaluar la ansiedad y un instrumento para medir la habilidad speaking como parte del aprendizaje del idioma inglés. Se observó un nivel de ansiedad medio y el principal componente fue la ansiedad ante los exámenes.

A Review of the Effectiveness of Foreign Language Enjoyment and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety on Learners' Engagement and Attainment

Cognitive factors are not the fundamental determinants of success in language learning. Foreign language attainment depends on both cognitive and affective factors, highlighting the deeper impacts of the former. Some scholars started to investigate affective issues, particularly negative emotions in language learning studies; nevertheless, reducing negative emotions such as anxiety should be accompanied by the development of positive emotions (e.g., well-being, autonomy, and enjoyment). Since then, a great number of researchers have examined the impact of anxiety and enjoyment in foreign language literature, particularly after the introduction of reliable and valid foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) and foreign language enjoyment (FLE) scales. So, the present study aims to review contemporary scholarly articles and books in this regard. Findings suggest that there has been a major interest in the evaluation of FLCA and FLE across a variety of dimensions including personality traits, interpersonal characteristics, and classroom conditions. The central issues are summarized into three categories of the relationship between FLCA and FLE, the robustness of respective scales, and the impact of individual and interpersonal factors. Hence, this research attempts to highlight probable gaps and areas for further examinations to help enrich the literature and improve the theoretical knowledge.

Anxiety in adult foreign language learning: The case of Ghanaian undergraduate students of Spanish

This study investigates students’ anxiety levels through the administration of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) among Spanish learners at a Ghanaian University. The differences according to level of instruction, the association between classroom anxiety and performance, as well as the possible relationship between language immersion and anxiety are also analysed using descriptive statistics, and Pearson’s Moment Correlation Coefficient. The findings indicate that the majority of student participants experienced foreign language classroom anxiety. Nonetheless, contrary to previous research findings, anxiety was not found to decrease systematically as proficiency increased. Additionally, as confirmed by previous studies, the result of the Pearson correlation analysis showed that students’ overall Spanish classroom anxiety and their classroom achievement had a negative association.

Prior processing, foreign language classroom anxiety, and L2 fluency

This study examines the role of prior processing (understood as L2 use earlier in discourse) in moderating the contributions of foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) and proficiency to L2 utterance fluency. Two groups with comparable FLCA and proficiency scores performed the same narrative task. One group completed it in the absence of any other L2 task, and one group completed it immediately after responding to a similar but not identical prompt. The participants’ speech was analyzed using breakdown, speed, and repair fluency measures. Results showed that prior processing can reduce FLCA’s interference during L2 production. Unexpectedly, prior processing did not produce significant fluency gains associated with lexical retrieval and syntactic encoding. Instead, the patterns of variation revealed that more attention was paid to message conceptualization. This finding implies that prior processing can moderate FLCA’s role in L2 production because it alters the way attentional resources are allocated in subsequent performance.

Anxiety and personality as indicators of academic performance in university foreign language classrooms

The main purpose of this study is to test whether students’ performance in official language tests in the university context is influenced, apart from anxiety, by certain personality traits. A sample of 394 university students in Spain were assessed in language academic performance using the Test of English for International Communication: Listening and Reading (TOEIC L&R), Foreign Language Anxiety using the Spanish version of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), Test Anxiety, by means of the Spanish version of the Test Anxiety Inventory and Personality Traits through the Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI). Frequency analyses for the categorical variables, and means and standard deviations for continuous variables were calculated, and a forward stepwise regression model was used to assess the independent variables that contributed significantly to the variance in the score on the academic performance. Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (FLCA) correlated most significantly with student foreign language academic performance, followed by the Neuroticism dimension, Test Anxiety and Extraversion. These results show that anxiety can still be considered the best indicator to predict language academic performance and that personality traits do play a relevant part in the foreign language learning process in the university context.