Third Blog Post

How does learner anxiety, or "communication apprehension," affect foreign language learning?  What is your experience as a learner, have you ever felt such an anxiety? Can anxiety play a positive role in learning? What can be done to alleviate anxiety in the classroom?

As a language learner myself, I can personally say that learner anxiety or “communication apprehension” has affected my use of language to varying degrees. In the classroom, and especially in small classes, I have always felt apprehensive when faced with potentially having to produce an answer or new idea. More than anything, I think that I’ve always been fearful of making a very obvious error or not being able to fully articulate my thoughts, essentially embarrassing myself. Although my learner anxiety is perhaps most pointed in my language courses, I always feel some degree of “communication apprehension,” even when speaking English. I certainly find myself feeling much less anxious when I am “overly prepared” for class or group discussions, but time often does not allow for such near-obsessive preparation. In short, unless I am 150% confident that I know what I am doing, I always feel some sense of nervousness when communicating in the classroom. I am a relatively quiet and reserved person, but I do not feel that my nervousness is that unique. Many of my friends and classmates often report experiencing similar anxiety in their classes. That being said, having to speak in my L2 certainly amplifies my anxiety, although much less now that I am a graduate student than earlier in my college career when I was taking more intermediate courses.

As a beginner Spanish student, my “communication apprehension” was often debilitating. Although I studied hard and probably took my courses more seriously than the majority of my classmates, I still feared mispronouncing Spanish words or saying something that was grammatically incorrect. To combat this anxiety I often wrote down my answers or ideas before sharing them with the class, as this way I always had some form of “backup” should I have frozen up. As a Spanish instructor, I notice that learner anxiety plays a huge part in my classroom. I have a very quiet, often exhausted, Spanish 401 class, and some of my students seem terrified by the idea of participating in class. At first, before I had given the semester’s first quiz, I attributed my class’ very quiet nature to students not coming to class prepared. Convincing students to participate or answer basic questions was like pulling teeth, and only two or three of twenty-two frequently raised their hands when I asked for volunteers. After giving the quiz I found, to my great surprise, that my students were doing quite well, and could answer even challenging questions with relative ease. I realized that my students really had studied the relevant material, but just were not yet comfortable speaking in their L2.  

Although I do think that anxiety can sometimes play a positive role in foreign language classrooms, I think that this really varies from person to person and from class to class. In the case of my class, “learner apprehension” is often suffocating, and makes extremely competent students feel unprepared to participate. Other students perhaps need some form of learner anxiety as a way to remind them that they are in fact in the classroom and need to conduct themselves accordingly. In my Spanish 401 class, I try to combat learner anxiety by not singling out individual students, especially those who I know are not comfortable. Instead of “forcing” everyone to participate, I try to allow more confident students to lead by example. I always be sure to thank each student for his or her response, and try to give a little extra praise to those who very rarely offer answers voluntarily. Instead of always working as a whole class, I also like to give students the opportunity to work in pairs or small groups, thereby offering them the opportunity to participate in less intimidating settings. Similarly, I often ask students to prepare short dialogs or presentations in small groups, so that they may participate “together” rather than individually.