According to the hypothesized model of language anxiety, difference in beliefs learners and teachers hold and the learning styles and teaching styles present in the language classroom can be the source of frustration and inhibition which when repeatedly experienced, can lead to language anxiety. In this section, first, teachers’
beliefs are presented relative to the anxiety in order to shed light on whether the
beliefs teachers hold are indeed out of synch with more anxious learners’ belief. Then the preference to silent learning style will be contrasted with instructors’ teaching styles. Results in this section are based on data analysis of 25 participants’ responses as only this number of learners out of the 214 were identified as more anxious based on their FLCAS scores and had their teachers’ answers to the BALLI and learning styles questionnaires available.
Table 30
Significant Differences of More Anxious Learners’ and their Teachers’ Responses to BALLI Items
balli1 balli8 balli9 balli10 balli11 balli12 balli13 balli14 balli16 balli17 Z -3.60a -3.42a -2.83b -2.12a -2.42b -2.93b -2.74a -3.45a -1.94a -2.81b
balli18 balli19 balli21 balli22 balli23 balli25 balli26 balli28 balli31 Z -2.50a -2.75b -3.48b -2.87b -3.67b -3.08b -3.60a -4.01b -2.84a
Note: The reported statistics are significant at p < .05 a. Based on negative ranks.
b. Based on positive ranks
More anxious learners’ and their teachers’ responses on BALLI items were compared using Wilcoxon test statistic. The results of the analysis are presented above in Table 30. Findings suggest that the 25 more anxious learners generally hold significantly different beliefs about language learning than their teachers. According to Horwitz’s(1987, 1988) categories of beliefs, these differences are very much apparent with respect to beliefs about learning and communication strategies and beliefs about aptitude to learn a foreign language. Based on Horwitz’s (1987, 1988) categories, the
items of BALLI where differences were found between learners and their teachers can be grouped accordingly:
beliefs about aptitude: items 1, 10, 11, 16, 19
beliefs about the difficulty of language learning: item 25,
beliefs about the nature of language learning: items 8, 12, 17, 23, 28
beliefs about learning and communication strategies: items 9, 13, 14, 18, 21, 22, 26 motivation: item 31
(Numbers in bold depict that on these items teachers scored higher than the students.)
It is interesting to note that the greatest difference between the means were found for items referring to the nature of language learning. Students (Mstudent = 4.35) think that they can only learn English well in a second language environment (item12) as opposed to their teachers (Mteacher = 3.28). Anxious learners also believe that language learning entails primarily focusing on learning grammar (item 23) (Mstudent = 3.17, Mteacher = 2.12) and focusing on translation (item 28) (Mstudent = 3.71, Mteacher = 2.04), whereas teachers attribute more importance to learning about the foreign culture (Mstudent = 2.13, Mteacher = 3.32).
Peacock (1999) in his study of university students in Hong Kong, also found a significant difference between teachers’ and learners’ view on the importance of grammar. The results also depicted that those learners who believe that learning grammar rules should be the principal part of language learning also had lower proficiency scores. This may be due to the fact that these learners, focusing excessively on grammar become so inhibited that they enter the vicious circle of language anxiety and fail to develop their language proficiency (MacIntyre, 1999).
The results of the present sample underpin this claim: It seems that learners who
attribute more importance to the formal part of language learning and less value to its communicative part (as opposed to their teachers) tend to be more anxious.
Albeit Horwitz’s (1987, 1988) categories are more widespread, for the purposes of this dissertation study, Yang’s (as cited in Kuntz, 1996) category of beliefs about self-efficacy seemed to be more adequate, mainly due to psychometric considerations of reliability. The distribution of the variable derived from the aggregate score of the items that loaded onto this factor was found not to diverge significantly from normal. Nonetheless, the non-parametric Wilcoxon test was used to uncover the discrepancies between learners’ beliefs of self-efficacy and teachers’
beliefs about their learners’ self-efficacy (see construction of the teachers’ BALLI).
The reason for choosing the non-parametric equivalent of the paired sample t-test was the low number (n = 25) of respondents whose answers were analyzed.
Results showed that in five instances teachers’ perceptions of their students’
self-efficacy were lower than their learners’ perceptions of their own efficacy in learning English. In 20 instances, the reverse was true. The teachers’ and learners’
beliefs of students’ self-efficacy were found to be significantly different (z = -2.96, p
< .01) (Mstudent = 2.54, Mteacher = 3.02).
When the difference of more anxious learners’ self-efficacy and their teachers’
beliefs of the learners’ efficacy was computed into a new variable (taking the absolute value of the difference), the Spearman’s rho coefficient was calculated between the new variable representing discrepancy and anxiety measures. Restricted to more anxious learners (n = 25), a significant correlation coefficient of rs classanxiety = .51 was found with an associated significance of p = .009 between language class anxiety and the discrepancy of self-efficacy beliefs.
This result could be explained by the assumption that anxious learners who judge themselves inapt at completing a language task or to learn a language will experience even higher levels of anxiety if their teacher believes otherwise. In everyday terms, this can happen when teachers provide excessively difficult tasks for students to complete, overestimating learners’ abilities. Csíkszentmihályi (1997) in his Flow theory mentions this very phenomenon of setting too difficult tasks for learners as one causing anxiety.
Another group of discrepancies that were hypothesized to contribute to language anxiety were between learning and teaching styles. The learning styles scale that was included in the analysis was the one comprising the preference for silent learning style (see previous section for the results of principal component analysis).
Again restricting the investigation to this time only 24 more anxious learners, the Wilcoxon test results indicate (z = -3.43, p = .001) that there is a difference between participants’ preferences to learn silently and teachers not allotting room for much silence in the classroom (Mstudent =3.28, Mteacher = 2.65). 18 out of the 24 students preferred silence when learning as opposed to their instructors’ ensuring silence when teaching.
By comparing learners’ scores (n = 132) on the anxiety measures and the variable of discrepancy between silent learning and teaching style preferences, Spearman’s rho rs classanxiety = .50 was found to be significant at p < .01. Although this correlation is very weak, it can be inferred that those learners preferring silence are probably less communicative and are not likely to have a very high level of WTC in the foreign language classroom. A preference for silence when learning may also arise from an introverted personality. Dewaele and Furnham (1999) have shown that introverts are more prone to experiencing language anxiety and they tend to avoid
communicating in the foreign language. This deprives them of practice opportunities and their L2 communicative competence tends to develop slower than an extravert’s.
This can be a source of frustration for introverts when having to speak in a foreign language.
In general, the discrepancy between language anxiety and the dissonance between learners’ and teachers’ beliefs is more marked than the relationship between language anxiety and the discrepancy between learning and teaching styles.
Interestingly, from the teacher-learner differences in beliefs about language learning it seems that the learners hold more rigid beliefs about language learning as, for example, they find the explicit learning of grammar rules more crucial to learning.
These beliefs seem to parallel those of perfectionist language learners, whose personality character of perfectionism has been linked to experiences of anxiety in the language classroom (Gregersen & Horwitz, 2002).