Foreign Language Anxiety in the English Classroom: Towards a Deeper Understanding

Jason Hobman
Saitama University
jasonhobman[at]icloud[dot]com

Foreign Language Anxiety in the English
Classroom: Towards a Deeper Understanding
ABSTRACTClassrooms can be an anxiety-inducing environment for any student, but a number of students sufferfrom anxiety specific to language classrooms. The Horwitz Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety
Scale may be used to identify the existence of this specific type of anxiety in language classrooms(Horwitz, E., Horwitz, M., & Cope, J. 1986). I administered a Japanese translation of the questionnaire
to 95 university students of which 85 provided valid answers. The answers identified that there may
be a problem with anxiety in my classrooms. This article serves as a reflection on my presentation at
the LD30 conference in October 2023 in which I discussed the concept of foreign language anxiety,showed selected results of my survey, and offered some possible solutions to identifying anxiety inthe language classroom and ways in which teachers can adapt their lessons to be more inclusive of
the most anxious students.
Keywords: foreign language anxiety, learner development, teacher development, action research

Anxiety in the language classroom seems to be an ever-present problem no matter the level ofinstitution I work at. Learners who are just beginning their studies in English may be anxious about
speaking in front of their peers for fear of embarrassment or ridicule. It might be easy to assume thenthat motivated learners who show great success in language learning may not suffer from anxiety
in the same way. However, from my experience teaching intermediate and advanced learners, asthe demands of the language classroom increase, the fear of embarrassment or ridicule may also
increase, as these students may feel they have more to lose. Having said this, some of my mostenergetic and motivated students have been streamed into the lowest class of their institution, yetstill they openly profess to enjoy English. This paradox has puzzled me for a long time and was thereason I chose to focus on anxiety among language learners towards the end of my postgraduate
studies and, indeed, for the presentation that I did at the LD30 Conference at Gakushuin Universityin October 2023. My experience at the conference in some ways mirrors my research. No matter
how many times I present at a conference, I find that there are still some anxious feelings before
every presentation. In this reflection piece, I will first introduce foreign language classroom anxiety
and Horwitz’s foreign language classroom anxiety scale. I will then give a brief summary of the resultsof the foreign language classroom anxiety scale that I administered to 95 of my students followed
by a discussion of the problems that my students appeared to have. I will offer some suggestions on
how to alleviate anxiety in the language classroom and end with my conclusions.

LEARNING LEARNING『学習の学習』31(1)90JASON HOBMANFOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM ANXIETYWhen the audience members began to enter the room for my LD30 presentation, I felt anxious at
the thought of making a mistake or not being able to convey my thoughts correctly. This fear ofembarrassment or ridicule seems similar to what my students may feel in the classroom, but thepremise of my research is that there is an anxiety that is unique to or exacerbated by the foreign
language classroom. I began the presentation by introducing the concept of foreign language
classroom anxiety. Foreign language classroom anxiety was defined by Horwitz (1986) as a “distinct
complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviours related to classroom language
learning.” From this definition, we can already see that anxiety is a complex emotion, which may be
exacerbated by many factors unique to language classrooms. In practice, I have found (and I amsure that you have too) that many students stall when it comes to producing language in English
classes, especially when it involves being in front of other people. For this reason, Horwitz (1986),
in the same article that she defined foreign language classroom anxiety, created a corresponding
scale, the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale, of 33 likert questions to determine whether
a learner was suffering from an anxiety brought on by the language classroom itself. The test wasdesigned to measure the effect of three factors: test anxiety, communication apprehension, and fearof negative evaluation. For the sake of brevity, I can say that test anxiety did not seem to present amajor problem for my students, so I was only concerned with communication apprehension and fearof negative evaluation for this presentation.

DISPLAYS OF ANXIETY IN THE LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

I continued the presentation by introducing how anxiety may be observed. There are certain waysthat anxiety displays in the classroom that may not be obvious at first glance. Gregerson (2005)
identified behaviours in anxious students such as nervous gestures, twiddling thumbs, and self
touching. These could be considered to be signs of anxiety because they are unrelated to andtherefore do not enhance communication. Facial expressions may also give clues as to the anxious
state of students. Students avoiding eye contact and focussing their attention elsewhere might bedoing so to avoid the “threat” of a teacher’s persistent questioning. What seems to be apparent isthat students who are making nervous gestures or avoiding eye contact may in fact be succumbing
to a sort of negative arousal to cope with an unpleasant anxious feeling. Initially, teachers may feelthat students who play with their phones are being rude, but when considered under the concept ofnegative arousal it might be easy to see how they could be showing signs of anxiety. Mobile phones
are quite useful for an anxious student as they give them somewhere to focus their eyes (avoidingeye contact) and something for them to distract their hands (something to touch). For some students,
this could be a coping mechanism to distract from negative or anxious thoughts and feelings. In myclasses, I have observed some students who show these behaviours, so I decided to administer theforeign language classroom anxiety scale to identify any possible anxiety.

WHAT I FOUND OUT

I administered a Japanese translation of the Horwitz Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale to
95 of my students at two universities in Saitama and Chiba in April 2023. I administered the survey
online using a Google form and I received 85 valid responses. The students are considered tobe beginner level by both institutions, with most having a TOEIC score under 300. Nine students
refused to do the survey, and one result was invalid. From the 33 questions on the FLCAS I choseto look more closely at three questions for this presentation: Q7, Q11, and Q30. These questions
received the strongest response of the results and give clear insights into the students anxieties
linked to distorted appraisals. The results for these questions can be seen in Table 1. A response ofone suggests a strong agreement, and a response of five suggests a strong disagreement with thestatements in the questions.

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Table 1: Selected results from my implementation of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale(based on Horwitz et al. 1986)

Key:
Q7. I keep thinking that other students are better at English than I am.
Q11. I don’t understand why some people get so upset about English class.
Q30. I am overwhelmed by the number of grammar rules you have to learn to speak English.
A short summary of the results suggests that there was an overall anxious feeling among a majorityof students, with a subgroup of particularly anxious students. Further analysis of the results may offersome interesting insights. In response to question seven, “I keep thinking that other students are
better at English than I am,” students responded quite strongly with an average response of two. Thissuggests that a large group of students appraise the abilities of their peers as better than their own.
The mode of this question is 1 which suggests that a not insignificant number of students feel thisvery strongly. What strikes me as interesting about this response is that, if students are not willing toproduce English freely in front of others, they may not be basing their appraisal of others’ abilities onsomething they have seen in class. They might be basing their opinions based on an idea that they
have created.
Question 11 shows that students strongly disagree with the proposition “I don’t understand why somepeople get so upset about English class.” This suggests that many students are well aware of reasons
why some students are anxious during English classes and also that peers are very aware of what isgoing on around them rather than being consumed with their own anxiety. It may also suggest thatstudents are very perceptive of anxious behavioural cues in the classroom, which may be an asset toa teacher who is looking to make the classroom a less anxious environment.
Question 30 provoked the strongest response of the three questions selected for this presentation, thistime with students agreeing that the grammar burden was overwhelming for them. Again, the modeof the results was one, suggesting that there is a particularly anxious group among the students.

REFLECTING ON THE RESULTS

What do these results say about the prevalence of anxiety in my English classrooms? I can say withcertainty that anxiety presents a problem for the majority of my students. However, the degree towhich individual students may be suffering from anxiety and how this impacts their performancerequires further investigation and deeper reflection. I therefore find myself concerned with twoparticular points:
1. Why are students so anxious about the ability of other students when production in myclassrooms is limited?
2. Why are students overwhelmed by the amount of grammar rules in English despite having
undertaken six years of English study?
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Generally, anxiety is contrasted with fear in that the threat is not usually known, so an inability toappraise accurately may contribute to stress. My initial answer to both these questions, then, isappraisal. Students in my English classrooms appear to be overestimating the ability of others,overestimating the amount of work required to learn English, and underestimating their own ability. In
short, they do not seem to be able to appraise the situation around them accurately. This introduces
an unknown element to the English classroom and exacerbates anxious thoughts and feelings. Thereasons for this problem may not be readily apparent, but the survey results do offer some insights.
First, let us look at the first question from above. A majority of students showed signs of anxiety
when asked about assessing the ability of other students, but is their appraisal rational? If students
are taking an English class, then we can assume that they are not proficient users of the language,
so they probably do not have the ability to assess another student’s utterances for accuracy. What,then, could students be basing their ideas on? Some students, as well as engaging in coping
behaviours, may actually be constructing ideas about the classroom to reinforce their beliefs.
Perhaps there are confident students in the class who the teacher can rely on to answer questions,and these students are called upon more readily. This may give the perception that those students
are more capable, as they are likely to be praised by some teachers despite their answer not being
absolutely perfect. An anxious student may then develop the idea that these confident students
are more capable than them as a way to avoid volunteering. This has the unintended effect ofstudents not actually being able to measure their capabilities, however, so it may result in a vicious
cycle in which the student continuously retreats from producing in front of others, but also has
fewer opportunities to test their ability and receive feedback. In short, the students may create theidea of themselves as less capable as a coping mechanism, which in turn becomes a sincere belief.
The second question presents an equally puzzling problem. The majority of university students inJapan will have had at least six years of mandatory English education. The universities I work forare both private, and the associated junior high schools and high schools that most of the students
went to have three or four lesson hours in English every week. It is quite plausible that someone
could become a proficient speaker of English with this amount of education, but the students thatI surveyed expressed a strong anxiety towards the amount of grammar rules required to learn
English, suggesting that they were not confident in their ability. Reflecting upon this, I wondered
if the way of teaching can cause students to poorly evaluate what is expected of them. This issomething that is beyond the scope of the FLCAS, but it is an area I have a strong interest in andsomething I wish to pursue by doing further research. Many junior and senior high schools in Japanare known to use a grammar translation approach known as yakudoku which is considered tohelp students prepare for their entrance exams for university. Indeed, the schools associated withthese two universities use this method which prioritises the teaching of complex grammar andvocabulary at the expense of production practice, particularly in terms of speaking. Some students
may indeed see success on the English sections of their exams and may evaluate themselves
highly. Universities in Japan, however, are expected to prepare students for the world of work,so the focus is often on all-English lessons with a non-Japanese teacher and an expectation thatthe students share their ideas in groups or presentations in front of their peers. It might be nosurprise, then, that students feel overwhelmed by the demands of university education if they are
confronted with a completely new style of teaching that expects them to use previously neglectedskills. This mismatch may be a cause of anxiety, as students are no longer able to appraisethemselves by their previous yardstick, causing them to overestimate what is required of them.

SUGGESTIONS FOR ALLEVIATING ANXIETY IN THE LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

Anxiety may be an ever-present problem in language classrooms, but it may not always be easy
to spot, especially if the students are of a different culture to the teacher. The first step in anyintervention might be to identify more noticeable signs of anxiety in the language classroom. This93

LEARNING LEARNING『学習の学習』31(1)Foreign Language Anxiety in the English Classroom: Towards a Deeper Understanding

may be difficult, but it can improve with practice. If a student appears to be doing something that
may come across as rude or disruptive, give them the benefit of the doubt and withhold judgment.
If students are using their phone, does their facial expression seem interested in what is on the screenor do they appear stressed? Are they interacting with the phone intently or are they just looking fora way to keep their fingers occupied? There may be a very subtle difference between a student
who genuinely does not care and a student who is overwhelmed by the demands of the language
classroom. Also, my implementation of the survey identified that students may be very aware of theanxious feelings of other students, so this may be reflected in the class atmosphere. If students areunwilling to speak, some may interpret this as laziness or an unwillingness to interact. However,this may actually be a sign that students are anxious and might require a little more guidance inwhat they do. Next time, if students are silent in the classroom, maybe it is a sign that students needmore information or explicit instruction for them to be able to appraise the situation accurately and act
accordingly.
There may also be ways that teachers can structure classes over the semester to alleviate anxiety
without direct intervention. Rather than asking students to come straight to the front of the classroomor to present their answers to a question without preparation, demands could be slowly increased
over the course of a semester. In the first lesson, students could be asked to introduce themselves
while sitting at their seat after being given a generous amount of time to prepare (both the words
and mentally). In the next lesson, they could be asked to stand up at their desk and say a few words.
Demands could be increased gradually throughout the semester until eventually students are comfortablecoming to the front of the class and speaking without preparation.
As my analysis of the results determined that students may be unable to appraise accurately, it may
be useful to help students do this. They may be given five minutes at the end of the class to reflect
upon their progress that day. This can be structured in such a way that students are guided into
assessing the evidence for their assumptions and critically evaluating their beliefs. They could beasked to answer questions such as “How many times did I volunteer to answer a question in classtoday?” or “How well did I understand this lesson compared to last week?” These simple questions may
offer students a chance to understand that they are indeed making progress and English learning might
be a steep challenge, but perhaps not as overwhelming as they had thought.

FINAL THOUGHTSComing to the end of the presentation, I felt a sense of relief that I had been able to share my researchwith the audience who seemed to have a keen interest in what I had to say. The audience members
were enthusiastic with their questions. One member seemed to have a strong interest in using myJapanese translation of the FLCAS at their own school, which of course I was happy to oblige. The
response to my presentation allayed any anxiety I had at the start of the presentation, and it mademe empathise with my own students in the sense that it is very difficult to put yourself out there in
front of others, especially so when speaking a foreign language. However, putting myself and myresearch out there offered me the chance to meet like-minded and supportive people who helpedme consider my research from different perspectives and undertake the critical reflection that isrequired to become a better researcher. Creating the same supportive space for my students toundertake these challenges, alleviate their anxious feelings, and become more confident learners
is a new priority after this experience.

CONCLUSION

To conclude, the results of my research suggest there is a general feeling of anxiety in my classrooms.
I identified that the students’ inability to appraise themselves and the situation around themselves
accurately may be a primary cause of their anxiety. This may be caused by their previous English
education and a conflict that appears when they enter university. The suggestions I offered involved
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teachers being more empathetic to students and withholding judgement. Teachers could also stage
activities to introduce anxiety-inducing tasks gradually. The students themselves may also be asked
to think critically about their performance in the classroom at the end of each class to encouragethem to appraise their abilities better. Anxiety may be a common problem in language classrooms,
but if teachers and students adapt, there may be more solutions to the problem than first thought.

REFERENCES

Gregersen, T. S. (2005). Nonverbal cues: Clues to the detection of foreign language anxiety.
Foreign Language Annals, 38(3), 388–400.
Horwitz, E., Horwitz, M., & Cope, J. (1986). Foreign language classroom anxiety. The Modern Language
Journal, 70(2), 125–132.

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