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levels of FLA. All five of them expressed dissatisfaction with their L2 proficiency, particularly their speaking skills. In addition to making mistakes as the biggest source of anxiety (see above), interviewees pointed to other features of their own L2 speech that caused them to feel anxious when speaking their TL. Pearl, for instance, complained about the disparity between the speed of her thoughts and the fluency of her speech, which she found frustrating.
My English is halting and slow, I always stop to think, and I feel my mind is much quicker than my sentences. This is a frustrating feeling; it makes me upset and afraid to speak.
Talking about her dread of “long silences”, Ellen also referred to a similar, fluency-related concern. What made her tense and self-conscious about speaking English was the realisation that she could not react as quickly and easily in the TL as she would have liked, as she needed time to put her thoughts and sentences together, and the ensuing “silences” made her feel terribly uncomfortable.
The reason I dread being called on is that I need time to think, and long silence can be so embarrassing.
Zoe’s comment below exemplifies another recurrent concern of the interviewees. They had the feeling that they could not express themselves in the TL as well or precisely as they would have liked to – an uncanny feeling that rather than saying what they wanted to, they said what they were able to, as if someone else was speaking, not they themselves.
What I say is very often different from what I'd like to say, somehow it's not as effective or impressive. I find this embarrassing, and the more I feel this, the more anxious I become. In the end, I don’t know what I wanted to say.
Joanna referred to a similar concern when talking about the frustration she felt at the realisation of the gap between her native- and foreign language competence.
Sometimes I play a game: I say something in Hungarian, and then I try and express the same ideas in English. When I feel I can't, or the way I can is grammatically incorrect, it makes me very upset.
Facing their limitations in the TL and failure to come up to their own personal expectations, as these excerpts suggest, was a major source of anxiety for the interviewed English majors.
Joanna’s words below appear to be reflective of a growing impatience these advanced-level learners felt because of not being able to achieve a satisfactory enough for them mastery of the TL even after long years of commitment to learning it.
After so many years of learning English I should be at a higher level. I should be able to speak English any time, with greater ease and correctly.
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proficiency. The five English major students – identified by the Hungarian FLCAS as the most anxious of 117 EFL majors surveyed – did indeed experience high levels of FLA in their university English classes. The anxiety reactions these advanced-level language students reported – negative feelings and emotions in and about classes, psycho-physiological symptoms, reticence/TL avoidance – are all well-known manifestations of language learning anxiety, documented among learners at lower levels of L2 proficiency (e.g., Horwitz et al.
1986; Price 1991). Therefore the study shows that long years of commitment to learning a foreign language and a relatively high level of proficiency do not necessarily confer a sense of confidence in using the target language to every learner. Far from being confident, the interviewed students, as we have seen, felt so uncomfortable and stressed in their classes at university that their anxiety made them reluctant to use the TL.
As for the sources of participants’ FLA, essentially two major sources have been identified, namely: (1) certain aspects of university English classes as perceived by highly anxious English majors (level/standard, teacher expectations towards them, classmates’ L2 proficiency) and (2) the perceptions, feelings of these learners concerning their own L2 competence (inaccuracies, limited fluency, reaction time, quality of self-expression, etc.,).
The first of these findings shows that learners’ perceptions of what is expected of them as language majors (i.e., advanced-level learners and would-be English teachers or other EFL professionals) can be a major source of anxiety for students who have chosen to specialise in FL study. While outside the classroom the five anxious interviewees felt relatively comfortable when using the TL, in their classes at university, as we have seen, they began to worry about their TL performance. This is because in this context they felt the need to present themselves as high-level, accomplished speakers of English before their teachers and fellow English-specialist classmates and simply feared not being able to fulfil the image of the expert-user of the TL. This interpretation is in line with the theory of why even non-native language teachers are susceptible to FLA (Horwitz 1996), and it also explains the seemingly paradoxical finding that English major students scored higher on FLA compared to less proficient non-English majors in the questionnaire survey to which this interview study was a follow-up (Tóth 2009).
The second major finding demonstrates that learners’ expectations of themselves are a crucial factor in language learning anxiety at more advanced levels of instruction. Learners like the participants of this study may be relatively proficient in the language, however, their own personal expectations of themselves as L2 speakers are also higher compared to those of learners at lower levels of proficiency. Rather than being satisfied with making themselves understood, learners at this level, as we have seen, would like to speak elaborately and easily in the foreign language, as they do in their L1 and as native speakers do; consequently, discrepancies between this ambition and their actual L2-related self-perceptions can be a great source of anxiety and frustration for them.
Therefore, teachers of advanced-level foreign language courses, including those teaching other subjects in FL departments, should not believe that affective factors like learner anxiety are not to be reckoned with at higher levels of language instruction. While it is true that most learners do not exhibit anxiety of such severity as reported here, teachers should be aware of the possibility that at least some of their learners may experience similar fears and worries as the students in this study. Awareness of and sensitivity to this issue is the first step to creating a positive, supportive classroom environment, one encouraging co-operation and collaboration rather than competition between learners, one that is a place for learning rather than just demonstrating knowledge. As evidenced by anxious English majors’
experiences, this is no less important for learners at more advanced levels of L2 learning than for their less advanced counterparts.
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Zsuzsa Tóth
Institute of English and American Studies, PPCU toth.zsuzsa98@yahoo.com