Anxiety and the Language Learner

Anxiety and the Language Learner

Language-learning involves the learner in ego threats related to competence, performance, and personal value. Anxiety is the anticipation of or response to the various threats represented by the learning process and by membership in a community of learners. While a certain amount of anxiety can be beneficial to the process of language acquisition, each individual learner situates a particular task at a different point on the continuum between challenge and threat. If the task is perceived as a threat rather than a challenge, it inhibits the learner from success. Because the challenge/threat threshold varies from learner to learner, it is useful to examine the underlying causes of anxiety as it expresses itself in language learning. If we understand what factors influence the perception of a task as either challenge or threat for a particular learner, the teacher can respond more effectively to his or her needs in the learning process. Learner personality, motivations, attitudes, and identity all playa part in the development of learner ego and influence success or lack of success in second language acquisition. In addition, this paper contends that one of the major underlying factors in learner anxiety is, in fact, death anxiety. Because language learning engages the learner on so many levels, it involves potential intellectual, psychological, emotional, interpersonal, and cultural ego. threats that, while not leading to literal physical death, represent a kind of figurative death -threat that contributes to learner anxiety. To apply the theoretical discussion of anxiety to the practical realities of language-learning, this paper summarizes and discusses research that highlights correlations between personality. motivations, attitudes. and identity and levels of learner anxiety. Such research both allows us to come to a clearer understanding of the factors that influence learner anxiety and to discover avenues for further investigation. Above all, it emphasizes the uniqueness of every learner and the need for responsive and reflective teaching that strives to challenge but not to threaten.