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52ANXIETY AS AN AFFECTIVE FACTOR IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING
Abu Nurshat Salamatkyzy
Master of Education, University ofInternational Business, Almaty
Abstract
This article is devoted to the study of language anxiety, which negatively affects the learning process and the final results of learning a foreign language. This study aims to identify the degree of language anxiety among pupils of Almaty Bilim Innovation Lyceum for boys in several areas, such as tension in the process of interpersonal communication, anxiety in test situations, fear of negative evaluation by others and during the educational process.
In total, 102 pupils of Almaty Bilim Innovation Lyceum's 7th, 8th and 9th grade students participated in the survey. The material was adapted from the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (a Scale for measuring language anxiety when learning a foreign language).
The results of the survey showed that younger students are more susceptible to language anxiety.
The task of the teacher is to create a favorable psychological climate in foreign language classes in order to remove barriers that prevent the best development and perception of the subject being studied.
Keywords: language anxiety; language learning; English as a foreign language; survey; FLCAS
Introduction
Learning foreign languages is not only the acquisition of foreign language competence, but also communicative flexibility, the ability to learn, emotional stability, as well as the ability to psychologically integrate into the learning process. The effectiveness of such a multilateral process of mastering a foreign language is directly connected with psychological readiness of the learner to assimilate and apply foreign language class, and life situation, to believe in your abilities, don't be afraid to make mistakes and not feel "tightness" in communication in a second language, i.e. be able to overcome psychological barriers.
The educational process is not only the students' acquisition of knowledge, but also the ability to master them. The final result largely depends on the psychological readiness of students to overcome prevailing stereotypes and ideas about their capabilities. It is known that the psychological problems that arise in the educational process adversely affect the process of mastering the subject. They include anxiety, fear, disbelief in one's own strength, fear of mistakes, and motivation (Ariyanti, 2016).
Anxiety in general is an unstable emotional state with a feeling of fear, the intensity of which can vary (Bashir, 2014). Issues related to this phenomenon have been the subject of research in the last three decades.
The psychological barrier can become a serious obstacle in the process of communication (a state of increased anxiety when speaking) and during training (for example, fear of encountering an incorrect assessment of errors on the part of the teacher and other students) (Vemuri, Ram, Kota, 2013).
Understanding anxiety as one of the most common psychological emotions is a prerequisite for providing the necessary support to anxious second / foreign language learners (Zheng, 2008). Anxiety is a complex, multidimensional phenomenon. In modern science, there are several approaches to the definition of this phenomenon. From the point of view of the situational approach, anxiety is interpreted as an emotional state. According to proponents of the dispositional approach, anxiety is an individual feature, a person's tendency to experience a state of anxiety, its stable feature. Anxiety is manifested by individuals in different situations in
different ways, and its manifestations affect the success of students' educational activities
Anxiety in a foreign language class is explained by a number of reasons. Price (1991, as cited in Von (2003)) argued that the level of difficulty in some foreign language classes, students' personal perception of their own language abilities, certain individual situations inside the classroom cause barriers and troubles in students' second language acquisition. Anxiety in the context of a foreign language lesson is a form of anxiety that is usually caused by a certain type of situation (for example, speaking a foreign language). In a broader research context, MacIntyre (1998) noted that language anxiety is a form of situational anxiety, and stressed that research on this topic should use measures of anxiety experienced in specific second language (L2) contexts, such as in the classroom. He understood language anxiety as "anxiety and a negative emotional reaction that occurs when learning or using a second language" (page 27). Horwitz (1986) also recognized that situational anxiety caused by learning or using a foreign language is largely independent of other situational anxieties. A self-reporting tool called the Foreign Language Class Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) was developed, designed to assess communication perception, test anxiety, and the fear of negative evaluation associated with language anxiety. This tool, by eliciting the anxiety responses typical of foreign language class conditions, has sparked an avalanche of similar studies that convincingly demonstrate that language anxiety has a debilitating role in foreign language class in various contexts.
Since anxiety, as most studies show, negatively affects the process of language acquisition, it is necessary to identify students who really experience psychological discomfort in a foreign language class.
Understanding language anxiety in different contexts provides the basis for a thorough study of English language learners in Kazakhstan. This study explores the nature of anxiety (both in foreign language class and in testing situations). The purpose of this study is to study the degree of language anxiety among students of the secondary school with different levels of English proficiency.
Methodology
Foreign scholars developed a system for measuring language anxiety in the form of a test - the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) (Hor-witz, Horwitz & Cope, 1986), which consists of 33 points on a 5-point Likert scale. This test was the starting point of surveys in the study of language anxiety in various situations and contexts. However, in this study, the survey questions were used as a base, but as the determiners were chosen three options: low anxiety, moderate anxiety and high anxiety.
Attempt to revise the factor structure of Horwitz's FLCAS was made by Na (2007), who used the Chinese version and found that there are also four factors, namely communication anxiety, test anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, and English language learning anxiety. This tool was applied to a group of 115 second-year high school students studying English as a foreign language in China. The proposed final model used all 33 elements from the original tool. Subtypes of linguistic anxiety were distributed as follows: 8 questions (1, 9, 14, 18, 24, 27, 29, 32) correlated with barriers in interpersonal communication, 9 questions (3, 7, 13, 15, 20, 23, 25, 31, 33) - with a negative assessment (in front) of others, 5 questions (2, 8, 10, 19, 21) - with fear in test situations and 11 questions (4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 16, 17, 22, 26, 29, 30) - with psychological problems directly in the educational process, i.e. in the classroom.
The participants of this study were students of the 7th, 8th and 9th grades of Almaty Bilim Innovation Lyceum for boys. The lyceum accepts students starting from grade 7 and all the science lessons are in English, so it can be their first year of studying English intensively.
Data collection and data analysis procedure
In this study, a statistical analysis of the survey results was performed using the data provided by students' answers.
Results and discussion
The survey involved 102 respondents:
- 36 7th grade students;
- 36 8th grade students;
- 40 9th grade stiudents.
The level of English proficiency was determined by students independently, in accordance with the latest test results at the institute: entrance testing for 7th graders (Placement test) and current testing for 8th and 9th graders (Assessment test).
The results of descriptive analysis showed that when studying English, younger learners (7th and 8th graders) experience more psychological stress than their precursors.
As for the directions of linguistic anxiety, the obtained data was placed in table 1.
Table 1.
As it is seen in the given table, all level students have high anxiety level in interpersonal communication. 9 grade students' level of anxiety is lowest when it comes to tests, whereas 7th grade students have the
highest anxiety rate in testing situations. All classes have moderate anxiety rate during educational process. Others' thoughts about them also put barriers in foreign language classroom to the students.
Conclusion
Psycholinguistic problems can accompany the process of learning any language. As can be seen from our research, students of secondary school experience language anxiety to a greater or lesser extent, especially this is expressed in the first year of study when performing test tasks. The task of the teacher is to reduce the degree of this tension, since a favorable psychological climate in foreign language classes lessens anxiety and tension, strengthens students' confidence in their abilities and thereby contributes to improving the level of foreign language linguistic and communicative knowledge and skills.
References
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