Merde, Merde, Merde: The Testing Effect, Foreign Language Anxiety, and Their Impact on Foreign Language Learning

This experiment examined the effect of foreign language classroom anxiety and assigned learning condition (repeated studying or repeated testing) on participant recall of newly-learned foreign language vocabulary word pairs. Previous research has identified a testing effect, which is a phenomenon where repeated testing is better for a learner’s longterm recall than repeated studying. The hypothesis for this experiment was that the testing effect would occur for students with lower levels of foreign language classroom anxiety but not for students with higher levels of foreign language classroom anxiety. Sixteen participants recruited from Introductory French and Introductory Arabic classrooms at the Claremont Colleges were divided into two learning condition groups, study (SSST) or test (STTT). Participants were also categorized as higher or lower anxiety based on their responses to the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale. All participants studied 40 English-foreign language word pairs in Session 1. In Sessions 2 and 3, participants in the SSST condition restudied the word pairs, while participants in the STTT condition took a cued recall test where they attempted to retrieve the foreign language word in response to the English word cue. In Session 4, all participants took a cued recall test. Contrary to the hypothesis, the results showed that the testing effect occurred for participants with higher anxiety but not for participants with lower anxiety. The results of this experiment suggest that repeated testing counteracted the negative effects of anxiety on test performance for higher anxiety foreign language learners. This finding has implications for the educational strategies that should be implemented to lessen students’ foreign language classroom anxiety and potentially increase their recall of foreign language vocabulary in an introductory foreign language classroom at the college level. FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANXIETY AND TESTING 2 The Testing Effect, Foreign Language Anxiety, and their Impact on Foreign Language Learning Many educators see the testing effect as a reliable justification for providing their students with tests and quizzes prior to cumulative final exams. The testing effect, first introduced by scientist Edwina Abbott in 1909, states simply that testing participants on material increases their retention of said material in the future (Pastötter & Bäuml, 2014). This theory has proven to be effective in educational contexts, ranging from subjects such as science, reading comprehension and foreign language learning. Because of its association with memory retention, educators are likely to implement test-enhanced learning in their classrooms. However effective the testing effect may be, test-enhanced learning has also proven to be detrimental to students with high levels of test anxiety (Cassady, 2004). Moreover, in foreign language learning classrooms, a new type of anxiety is introduced: foreign language classroom anxiety (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986). The effects that repeated testing, in addition to foreign language classroom anxiety, have on memory retention and test performance have not yet been researched. Therefore, this study seeks to determine the effectiveness of the testing effect in a specific anxiety-inducing situation, i.e., foreign language learning, and whether students enrolled in a foreign language class will benefit from test-enhanced learning if they have high anxiety about learning a foreign language. The Testing Effect In their seminal article, Roediger and Karpicke (2006) demonstrated how the testing effect can and should be applied in educational settings as a tool to improve scores on exams in addition to future retention of material. For this experiment, researchers had participants FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANXIETY AND TESTING 3 study short passages (“The Sun” or “Sea Otters”): in Experiment 1, participants either read the passage and immediately took a test on it (testing condition) or studied it again (study condition) before they took the final test either 5 minutes, 2 days, or 1 week later. In the case of short-term retention (5 minutes), repeated studying proved to be more effective than testing. Yet, in the case of both long-term retention intervals, students who were tested prior to the final test performed better than those who were not. In Experiment 2, participants studied the passage, and either consecutively took three exams about the material (study, test, test, test; STTT), studied the passage two more times and took one test (study, study, study, test; SSST), or studied the passage three more times (study, study, study, study; SSSS) before taking the final test either 5 minutes or 1 week later. The results of Experiment 2 showed that massed practice (SSSS) was more effective for retention in the short term, but testing, especially repeated testing (STTT), helped greatly with retention in longer-term scenarios, even more than a single test session (SSST). In an educational setting, some forms of quizzing exhibit the benefits of repeated testing more than others. McDaniel, Anderson, Derbish, and Morrisette (2007) performed an experiment in an online course to better understand the generalizability of the repeated testing within an educational setting. Participants within this course took weekly quizzes (including multiple choice and short answer questions) in addition to two unit tests and a final exam, none of which counted for their course grade. Students in the control group were exposed only to the descriptive text, which did not include quizzing. The questions presented to students were worded differently in the quizzes than they were on the unit and final tests. In this experiment, the final test was administered approximately three months after students completed the first quiz. McDaniel et al. (2007) found that the testing effect FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANXIETY AND TESTING 4 was present for short answer questions but not for multiple choice questions and that students in the short answer question group also outperformed students in the control group. They proposed that the testing effect occurred in the short answer questions because short answer questions most resemble recall of material while multiple choice questions and reading-only merely required the recognition of facts. According to McDaniel et al. (2007), the testing effect is contingent on successful retrieval practice (in this scenario, of facts), which occur most when short answers are required of participants. Feedback also plays an important role in testing and in the testing effect. Jang and Marshall (2018) assigned participants to four conditions based on feedback type: “(1) feedback displaying the original question and four alternative options, including the correct answer (Feedback 1); (2) feedback displaying the original question and the correct answer (Feedback 2); (3) feedback displaying only the correct answer (Feedback 3); and (4) no feedback as the control condition” (Jang & Marshall 2018, p. 111). Participants underwent a multiple-choice test of 100 general knowledge questions, which, depending on the condition, was followed by feedback. Participants returned after two days to complete a final test, which was composed of the same questions that they had been tested on the previous time. From the results of the final test, researchers learned that participants who received feedback performed better on the final test compared to participants in the control condition. However, there was no significant difference between the results of the participants in the feedback conditions. This suggests that feedback, regardless of the way it is given to a participant, is beneficial for the retention of correct answers. Jang and Marshall (2018) speculate that this is the case because “when the correct answer [feedback] is made available, people can integrate that information into memory and improve performance” FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANXIETY AND TESTING 5 (Jang & Marshall 2018, p. 119). Feedback is an important component of testing in an educational environment, and the results of this study suggest that students will perform even better on a final test if they are provided with feedback prior to the final test. Foreign Language Learning and the Testing Effect Research has also consistently validated the testing effect in foreign language learning studies, especially when feedback is presented. One such study is that of Szőllősi, Keresztes, Novák, Szászi, Kéri, and Racsmány (2017). In their study, Szőllősi et al. (2017) examined the validity of the testing effect when the final test occurred in a stressful situation. Participants were exposed to and studied 40 Swahili-Hungarian word pairs. After the initial study of the vocabulary words, participants either restudied or were tested on the material (practice cycle) by typing in the Hungarian word equivalents of Swahili words. Participants in the testing condition were given feedback (the correct answer) for each word pair during the practice cycle. All participants returned to the lab seven days after the initial study phase for a final test, during which participants were exposed to either a stressful or non-stressful (control) task and their stress levels were assessed before and after this task. In the stress condition, participants underwent the Trier Social Stress Task (TSST), which included a 5-minute speech and a 5-minute verbal arithmetic assessment in an effort to induce anxiety. Participants in the control condition performed a control TSST, which did not contain the stress-inducing elements of the TSST in the stress condition but was created to reflect the tasks presented in the traditional TSST without the stressful elements. Then, for the final test of the vocabulary words, participants typed the Hungarian word equivalents for Swahili words. Szőllősi et al. (2017) learned that regardless of stress-condition, participants who were in the test