The Effects of Foreign Language Anxiety: Teachers’ and Students’ Perspectives

Abstract

While a number of studies have shown a negative correlation between foreign language anxiety (FLA) and FL performance, it is still controversial whether FLA should be conceived as only debilitating or also facilitating. Moreover, how FL teachers and learners, as the stakeholders, perceive the impact of FLA, remain unclear. In particular, little is known about how learners who learn English as a foreign language (EFL) and also an academic major would be influenced by FLA. This study thus focuses on Chinese university English majors who may experience high levels of FLA due to high expectations from their teachers or themselves, high peer pressure, and high personal significance of English achievement. This presentation will discuss pilot findings of a larger study examining the nature of Chinese EFL majors’ FLA and how FLA relates to FL motivation and performance. Contrary to previous findings, the preliminary results show that teachers normally hold that anxiety is negative and should be alleviated both in and outside of FL classrooms. Meanwhile, students with low levels of FLA believe that anxiety could facilitate their EFL learning and increase their intended effort, whereas highly anxious students feel discouraged by FLA. Moreover, most student participants regard FLA as a problem that needs to be dealt with by themselves since they believe that FLA mainly results from a lack of language proficiency. The findings could inform the development of pedagogical guidelines for EFL teachers to help their English-major students to cope with FLA or to take advantage of it.