I feel more tense and nervous in my language class than in my other classes.

– Item 26, Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale

… Right now, learning languages is my biggest and most fun hobby. I want to learn languages all my life, because when you know languages, you see things in new and different ways.

 – Systematic Work with Speaking Skills and Motivation in Second Language Classes

In response to a question on screen fatigue in a BBC interview on the metaverse, Alex Kipman of Microsoft suggested that human communication is about 5% speech; it’s 95% about everything else. And yet, speaking especially in a non-native language continues to cause anxiety for some. Why are students anxious and how can their anxiety be reduced?

Researchers have distinguished between generally anxious individuals and others who feel anxiety only in specific situations. A trio of researchers did ground-breaking work on anxiety which occurs specifically in situations when learners have to communicate in a non-native language. Their paper was featured in The Modern Language journal in 1986. One of their main contributions (in this paper) to the study of why having to communicate in a non-native language causes students anxiety, is the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS). As recently as in January this year, the FLCAS as been cited to be of “consistently high reliability” (Simsek, 2022).

Before discussing this scale and the causes of anxiety it reveals, it may be useful to wonder if going through the trouble to understand and overcome this type of anxiety is worth the effort.

Learning a new or another language means being able to communicate with native speakers of that language. This means the number of closer connections one has could increase. The number of opportunities available increases in accordance to the number of connections and one no longer has to compete in a limited pool. Every new language acquired is a key to a new culture and all its rich offerings. It could mean seeing possibilities only visible to those who are able to combine different knowledge systems. In short, languages open channels of resources or enable the forging of new channels and the permanent benefits far outweigh the efforts required in learning more than one language.

Therefore, it becomes very important for students to be able to learn languages well. According to the trio of researchers who came up with the FLCAS, learning a non-native language poses a set of challenges which is different from the challenges associated with learning other subjects (Horwitz et al., 1986). They say this is so because, the language we use is the expression of who we are; our “true self”. Without sufficient competency in a language, speakers would find it difficult to express who they truly are in interactions and their language inadequacy could create and serve to reinforce feelings of inferiority vis a vis the person(s) they are speaking to or hearing them speak.

Not wanting to engage in a non-native language because it could mean being disadvantaged is but one challenge. There are other challenges as shown in the FLCAS. The FLCAS is a 33-item questionnaire (positive self-referenced statements) which requires respondents to choose one among five possible responses ranging from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree.

Examples of items in the FLCAS which show challenges include, “I am afraid the other students will laugh at me when I speak the foreign language”, “I always feel the other students speak the foreign language better than I do”, “Language class moves so quickly I worry about getting left behind”, “It frightens me when I don’t understand what the teacher is saying in the foreign language” and “The more I study for a language test, the more confused I get”.

The response to these worries could be a reduction in engagement. In a Turkish study of foreign language anxiety, a student was asked why she felt anxious during one lesson but not in a subsequent lesson. She replied, “Today I was more relaxed because I thought I couldn’t learn at all. So why would I worry? I didn’t really care…” (Simsek, 2022).

There have been attempts by researchers to help students overcome these challenges associated with language learning. In 2019, two Norwegian researchers (Horverak & Aanensen, 2019) set out to solve the problem of the “lack of motivation and high dropout rates … in Norwegian schools”. They came up with the “five-step motivation method”. This method was based on the understanding that to be self-driven (intrinsic motivation), learners had to feel like they were capable of learning, they had the ability to make a difference to their current situation and that the environment they were in had to be conducive and inclusive (Ryan & Deci, 2000).

Their five-step method proceeds in stages. First, students have to identify what is important to them when it comes to learning the non-native language or what their goals are. Second, they have to ask themselves what would help them become successful. Then they have to pinpoint exactly what is preventing them from achieving success. Then, they have to list some areas of focus and then formulate a detailed plan to focus on such areas.

One of the duo who formulated the five-step motivation method, Horverak, worked with other members of the academic fraternity to apply this method to the foreign language learning classroom. Here, the method was translated to a series of 5 questions which students had to contemplate and answer over a series of lessons with the guidance of a teacher facilitator.

In 2022, Horverak and her colleagues published the finding that the five-step method works after trying it with Norwegian students who were learning either English or Spanish and Polish students who were learning English.

Students who participated in their study were of the view that speaking practice was very useful to improve proficiency. Some of them suggested that they could speak the language they were learning with “people I trust … then I can become more confident”. They believed that watching movies and television programmes in the foreign language as well as consuming social media in the foreign language would help them hone their language skills. Many of the participants identified performance anxiety as the main thing which stood between them and success. Their action plans included intentions such as, “Listen to an English podcast episode every week, if there are difficult words I don’t know from before, I write them down in a book I have at home, and what they mean”. 

Horverak and colleagues (2022) suggested that the reason these students experienced an alleviation of anxiety along with better learning outcomes could be because they reminded themselves of what was important to them, realised they could reach their destination but for certain obstacles which when systematically listed on paper took concrete form which could now be dealt with (as opposed to some vague, hazy notion of inadequacy which seemed to block the vision of their future selves) and decided to take action.

To learn to swim, one must get into the water.

The Brain Dojo