Language Anxiety

LANGUAGE ANXIETY & CLASSROOM DYNAMICS:
A Study of Adult Learners
(Anna Turula, 2002)

Anatomy of Language anxiety
Two hallmarks of language classroom: motivation and anxiety. On the one hand adult foreign language learners know why they are studying and, compared to younger students, they are far more struggled to persevere. On the other hand, many mature students enter the classroom victimized by a number of prejudices about foreign language acquisition.
This uneasiness is probably reinforced by barriers created by the mature nervous system of the adult learner. Such as students’ ego boundaries, adult learners to perceive their performance in the foreign language classroom as unnatural or ridiculous that lead to feelings of tension and apprehension associated with second language contexts.
Turula (2002) said, “I believe that with age the tension and anxiety associated with learning a new language become stronger and more difficult to overcome.” Sometimes, some individuals are reluctant to speak, especially when they realize or assume that other students are more fluent.
MacIntyre and Gardner (1994) distinguish between trait anxiety, which is an individual’s predisposition for feelings of tension and uneasiness, and situational anxiety, which appears only under certain circumstances.
Classroom dynamics is everything that happens in and between the participants. There are three aspects of it that are related to classroom dynamics: acceptance anxiety, orientation anxiety, and performance anxiety.

Language Anxiety and Classroom Dynamics
Davies and Rinvolucri (1990) look at the problem of anxiety by examining the classroom environment and explaining circumstances in which students may feel insecure. Some classroom situations make students feel that they are judged (when learners are mocked, or when teachers correct the error explicitly), they are isolated (when students feel anonymous, disregarded, deserted by the teacher), and they lack control (the failure to manage classroom discourse).

Does Starting Late Mean “Late”?
It isn’t true that anxious adult learners can’t succeed in foreign language; however, when compared with successful adult learners, we find that success for the anxious learner is much harder to achieve.
If we agree that teacher’s task is not only to teach but also to assist learning, we can’t escape the conclusion that teacher’s main tasks are threefold: first, to identify the causes of language anxiety and loss of self-confidence in the classroom and eliminate or alleviate them; second, to understand the traits of good classroom dynamics; and third, to create a classroom environment in which these traits may flourish.

A Successful Learning Environment
Turula said that she believed that what we need is a collaborative spirit, a clear sense of direction, and a sense of fun.
Students enter the classroom with all their knowledge, feelings, interests, and preferences. Why not encourage them to share? To share, however, means to be open, which may not be very easy if the students don’t have an example of someone being open first. Here, the teachers give an example at first, then, they encourage their students to do something similar.
Sharing in the language classroom means that the students help each other develop effective learning strategies that enable to them to increase their repertoire of cognitive skills. The sense of belonging, the pride taken in common achievements, moving toward a common goal, and compromising on the way to that goal are ways to reconcile one’s own need for autonomy with the common good of the group.
Clear sense of direction
Another important component of a successful language classroom is the group’s ability to define its goals and persevere in achieving them. Adult learners need to know how the particular activities and exercise help them achieve their overall learning aims and why they need to do them. The students’ joint efforts aimed at achieving common goals have to be reinforced by the conviction that each student’s personal needs are important.
Successful individualization in the language classroom enables each student to define his or her learning style and sustain motivation by completing challenging tasks. Individualization provides a solid basis for ensuring student autonomy. In assuming responsibility for their learning, students exercise independence in their choice of learning strategies and maintain the right to their own, unmanipulated way of tackling problems.
A sense of direction is easier to maintain if a learner’s self-esteem is high and constantly reinforced. Achieving a sense of direction requires frequent, sincere, and evenly distributed appraisal. The teacher isn’t perceived as respectable, reliable, or trustworthy. The teacher’s personality, knowledge of the target language, professional qualifications, and teaching style, along with the attractiveness of lessons and ability to give clear explanations are among the chief factors leading to successful, motivating classroom environment.
The four component of a clear sense of direction – know-how, motivation, self-esteem, and autonomy – are worth trying to attain, not only because they help students persevere, but also because once attained, through mutual reinforcement, they become self-perpetuating, and thereby propel successful learners toward their goals.

Sense of fun
A sense of fun is indispensable to create a relaxed learning environment and sustain motivation.

Conclusion
The teacher’s response to the language anxiety of adult learners can resemble the way light passes through a lens and its ray are intensified (a convex lens for an authoritarian, uncompromising teacher, student feel isolated) or dispelled ( a concave lens for a teacher who creates a friendly environment of caring and sharing with a sense of direction and fun).