anxiety in learning english as a foreign language

475 Pages·2006·1.22 MB·English

TESIS DOCTORAL

ANXIETY IN LEARNING ENGLISH
AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: ITS ASSOCIATIONS WITH
STUDENT VARIABLES, WITH OVERALL PROFICIENCY,
AND WITH PERFORMANCE
ON AN ORAL TEST

Jean T. Stephenson Wilson
Editor: Editorial de la Universidad de Granada
Autor: Jean Todd Stephenson
D.L.: Gr. 1879- 2006
ISBN: 978--84-338-4101-8
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AUTORA: Jean T. Stephenson Wilson

DIRECTORA: Dra. Elaine Hewitt Hughes

Departamento de Filologías Inglesa y Alemana,
Universidad de Granada

Granada, ……… de …………………..... 2006
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Memoria presentada por la licenciada en Filosofía y Letras (Sección Filología
Hispánica) Jean Todd Stephenson Wilson, con el título “Anxiety in Learning English as
a Foreign Language: Its Associations with Student Variables, with Overall Proficiency,
and with Performance on an Oral Test”, para aspirar al Grado de Doctora en Filología
Inglesa por la Universidad de Granada.

Fdo. Jean T. Stephenson Wilson

LA DIRECTORA

Dra. Elaine Hewitt Hughes
Profesora de la Universidad de Granada
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Dra. Elaine Hewitt Hughes, Profesora del Departamento de Filologías Inglesa y
Alemana, de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, de la Universidad de Granada

CERTIFICA: Que la Tesis Doctoral que presenta, al superior juicio del Tribunal
designado por la Universidad de Granada, Dña. Jean T. Stephenson Wilson, sobre
“Anxiety in Learning English as a Foreign Language: Its Associations with Student
Variables, with Overall Proficiency, and with Performance on an Oral Test”, ha sido
realizada bajo mi dirección.

Siendo la expresión de la capacidad científica de su autora, en condiciones que
la hacen acreedora del Título de Doctora, siempre que así lo considere el citado
Tribunal.

Granada, …..………………………………………, 2006
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Dedication
To my family
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Acknowledgements

I wish to express my warmest gratitude to the following people, without whose
help I would not have been able to complete this thesis.

My tutor, Dr. Daniel Madrid Fernández, Professor of English at the University
of Granada, for his generosity, kindness, and encouragement.

My director, Dr. Elaine C. Hewitt Hughes, lecturer at the Department of
Filología Inglesa y Alemana, for her knowledgeable and meticulous guidance, and for
her constant patience and warmth.

Colleagues from the University of Granada for all their help and support: Dr.
Miguel Ángel Martínez-Cabeza Lombardo, Dr. Manuel Jiménez Raya, Dr. Tony Harris,
Dr. Antonio Lozano Palacios, Dr. José Manuel Martín Morillas, Dr. Graeme Porte, Dra.
Ángeles Linde López, Dra. Carmen Pérez Basanta, Dra. Encarnación Hidalgo Tenorio,
Dr. Luis Quereda Rodríguez-Navarro, Dra. Isabel Peralta Ramírez, Dr. Guillermo Rubio
Alba, Dra. Ángela Alameda Hernández, Dª. Soledad Iranzo Bel, D. Juan Carlos
Barranco Muñoz, Dª. Marina Romera Martín, Dª. Marta Alarcón Martínez, and Dª.
Adriana Trapero Fernández.

Dr. Rafael Olivares Castillo, head librarian at the Faculty of Biblioteconomía y
Documentación, for his care and resourcefulness in helping me in my searches for
bibliographic material.

Dª Sandra White, B.A., teacher of English as a Foreign Language at the Centro
de Lenguas Modernas, University of Granada, for her dedication and thoroughness as a
rater.

Dr. Francisco Cano García, senior lecturer at the Faculty of Psicología,
University of Granada, who has recently published articles on educational psychology
in Learning and Instruction, and in the British Journal of Educational Psychology, for
his thorough and patient advice on data analysis and for checking my statistical
procedures.

D. Antonio Rodríguez Morillas, graduate in Traducción e Interpretación of the
University of Granada, for his painstaking help in translating the Foreign Language
Classroom Anxiety Scale (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986) into Spanish, and in
correcting the Spanish expression of the Background Questionnaire (Stephenson &
Hewitt, 2006).

D. Francisco Salas Sánchez, for his knowledgeable back-translations of two
instruments into English and French: the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale
(Horwitz et al., 1986), and the Oral Test (Phillips, 1992), respectively, and for his
invaluable assistance in correcting the Spanish summary of this thesis.
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Dª. Carmen Aguilera Carnerero, for taking over my teaching with such care and
enthusiasm at the Faculty of Ciencias Políticas during the period of reduction in
teaching credits granted to me by the University of Granada.

I also wish to extend my humble gratitude to the following authors in the fields
of anxiety and of language anxiety, who have shown interest in my study and sent me
messages of support:

Dr. Elaine K. Horwitz, for her gracious permission to use the Foreign Language
Classroom Anxiety Scale (1986) in this thesis investigation, and for her good wishes.

Dr. Máximo Rodríguez and Dr. Orángel Abreu, for courteously sending me their
Spanish version of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (2003), and for their
encouragement.

Dr. Charles D. Spielberger, for his warm personal regards.

Dr. Tammy Gregersen, for her kind wishes.

Dr. Ralph Norman Haber, for his sound advice.

I would also like to thank the following students from the University of Granada:
Judít Suárez Pérez, Carmen María Rodríguez Nevado, María Rodríguez Frías, Carlos
Arana Molina, and Antonio Buitrago Acero, for their enthusiastic help in several
aspects of this thesis project.

Students from the Faculties of Biblioteconomía y Documentación, Ciencias del
Trabajo, and Ciencias Políticas y Sociología, not only for taking trial exams and for
completing provisional scales and questionnaires in order to help me pilot these
instruments, but also for their intelligent and constructive remarks about them.

I am indebted to the students enrolled in the English for Specific Purposes
course at the Faculty of Ciencias del Trabajo during the academic year 2004-2005, who
were the participants in this study, for all their hard work, and for their patience and
cheerfulness throughout the project.

I am especially grateful to my parents, Bill and Elsie Stephenson, to my
husband, Santiago Mesa Durego, to my children, Elena, Paul, and David, for their help,
support, and love over these years.

In, addition, I also hereby express my thanks to the following publishers for
granting permission to reproduce material from their journals:

Blackwell Publishing, for permission to reproduce two items from the Language
Class Discomfort Scale, in Ely, C. M., (1986), An analysis of discomfort, risktaking,
sociability, and motivation in the L2 classroom, Language Learning, 36(1), 1-25.

Blackwell Publishing, for permission to reproduce four items from the French
Class Anxiety Scale, and four items from the French Use Anxiety Scale, in Gardner, R.
C., Tremblay, P. E., & Masgoret, A. M., (1997), Towards a full model of second
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language learning: an empirical investigation, The Modern Language Journal, 81(3),
344-362.

Blackwell Publishing, for permission to reproduce the Foreign Language
Classroom Anxiety Scale, in Horwitz, E. K., Horwitz., M. B., & Cope, J., (1986),
Foreign language classroom anxiety, The Modern Language Journal, 70(2), 125-132.

Blackwell Publishing, for permission to reproduce three items from the Input
Anxiety Scale, in MacIntyre, P. D., & R. C. Gardner, (1994a), The subtle effects of
language anxiety on cognitive processing in the second language, Language Learning,
44(2), 283-305.

Blackwell Publishing, for permission to reproduce four Language Use Tasks in
MacIntyre, P. D., Noels, K. A., & Clément, R., (1997), Biases in self-ratings of second
language proficiency: the role of language anxiety, Language Learning, 47(2), 265-287.

Blackwell Publishing, for permission to reproduce the Culture Related Test
Questions, and the Students’ Cue Card (with Teacher Protocol), in Phillips, E. M.,
(1992), The effects of language anxiety on students’ oral test performance and attitudes,
The Modern Language Journal, 76(1), 14-26.

Blackwell Publishing, for permission to reproduce three items from the Foreign
Language Reading Anxiety Scale, in Saito, Y., Horwitz, E. K., & Garza, T. J., (1999),
Foreign language reading anxiety, The Modern Language Journal, 83(2), 202-218.

The National Council of Teachers of English for permission to reproduce two
items from the English Language Anxiety Scale, in Pappamihiel, N. E., (2002), English
as a second language students and English language anxiety: issues in the mainstream
classroom, Research in the Teaching of English, 36, 327-356.

ACTFL for permission to reproduce three items from the Reading Anxiety
Scale, in Sellers, V., (2000), Anxiety and reading comprehension in Spanish as a
foreign language, Foreign Language Annals, 33(5), 512-521.

The American Psychological Association for confirming permission to
reproduce two items from the Facilitating Anxiety Scale, and two items from the
Debilitating Anxiety Scale, in Alpert, R., & Haber, R. N., (1960), Anxiety in academic
achievement situations, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 61(2), 207-215.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

List of Tables ………………………………………………………………………… 17
List of Figures ……………………………………………………………………..…...19

ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………………………..20

INTRODUCTION ………………………….……………………………………...…23
General Objectives ………………………………..……………………....…...24
Research Background……...……………………………………………..…….26
Overview of the Thesis ………………………………………………..………..29
Significance of this Research. ………………………………………………….31
Definitions and Explanations of Terms Used in this Thesis …………………...32

PART I

REVIEW OF THE SELECTED AND EMPIRICAL LITERATURE

Introduction …………………………………………………………..……...….…….38

I.1. General Anxiety and Academic Anxiety .…….………………………….….…….40
I.1.2. State Anxiety and Trait Anxiety ………………………………………….42
I.1.2.1. Measurement of State Anxiety and of Trait Anxiety ………….. 42
I.1.3. Situation-Specific Anxiety …..…………………………………………....44
I.1.4. Facilitating Anxiety and Debilitating Anxiety …………………..………45
I.1.4.1. Measurement of Facilitating Anxiety and of Debilitating
Anxiety ………………………………………………………….46
I.1.5. Anxiety in Testing Situations ………………………………………..…...47
I.1.6. Manifestations of General Anxiety and of Academic Anxiety …….…..…50