Analysis of "Foreign Language Anxiety"
“Foreign Language Anxiety” effectively demonstrates the effects foreign language anxiety has on second language achievement in the classroom. The source also provides a greater understanding of the effects of foreign language anxiety upon Paris during her English learning experience. Horwitz et al. references numerous second language studies that explore the correlation between foreign language anxiety and second language achievement. Through analyzing these studies, the authors found that most studies found a “moderate negative relationship” between anxiety and achievement in the classroom (97). Therefore, the more anxious the student, the lower their achievement in the language. This negative correlation is evident in Zhou’s narrative; she recounts how she memorizes all of the English phrases in her textbook but was unable to orally communicate these phrases due to fear to communicate in English. Because the anxiety had such a negative effect on Zhou’s oral communication, her achievement, evident in her speaking abilities was lowered significantly.
These studies also found that anxiety negatively effects the student’s final grades in the language class and the student’s self-perception regarding “language proficiency” (98). “Foreign Language Anxiety” argues that the reason that student’s have lower grades and lower self-confidence in their language abilities is because foreign language anxiety affects “cognitive processing” (98) when a student is learning a second language. Foreign language anxiety interferes with a student’s ability to become functional in the language and inhibits the student’s ability to speak, write, listen, and read the language. This study suggests that anxiety caused Paris’ English language skills to be handicapped, therefore she had a lowered confidence in her language abilities and suffered from lower grades. This is true of Paris’ narrative to a point; it is evident at the beginning of her narrative that she had low-confidence in her speaking skills, leading her to speak in utterances and being fearful of conversational encounters with Michael. Her low self- confidence in her language skills progressed to foreign language anxiety, causing her English skills to be inhibited. Zhou’s narrative suggests that anxiety, low self-confidence, and inability to utilize your language skills as interconnections of each other, and not just a cause and effect process. Also, Zhou’s narrative never alludes to her fear of communicating to her grades in English.
The authors indicate that foreign language anxiety influences how the student communicates in the classroom; the anxious student communicates less often and more concretely than the normal student. Because the anxious student does not exercise their language skills as frequently as the normal students, the anxious student will have a lowered autonomy in the language. This is also illuminated in Zhou’s narrative due to the fact that she rarely communicates in her English class due to her anxiety. “Foreign Language Anxiety” also suggests that foreign language anxiety has a negative impact on a student’s motivation to learn a language and has a negative effect on attitude toward the language. This is understandable because if a student experiences the negative effects of anxiety, such as tremors and sleep disturbances, when learning a language, they would naturally have a negative connotation for the experience. Also Zhou points out in her narrative that when she was experiencing foreign language anxiety, she thought of English as an “undesirable dessert”.