Anxiety in the second language classroom

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Among Stephen Krashen's well-known hypotheses about second language acquisition is what he called the Affective Filter Hypothesis. For me this always felt like a fancy pseudo-scientific name for something very simple: when students are not emotionally minded to learn a language they do it less well. This lack of motivation to learn can stem from a number of factors, for example lack of perceived usefulness of the subject, poor teaching, dull content or even antipathy towards the target language people or culture. But one factor which researchers have also examined is the role of anxiety in the languages classroom.

Psychologists will tell you that, in general, we learn more effectively when we are relaxed and when anxiety levels are low. In this post, I'm dipping again into Jack C. Richards' book Key Issues in Language Teaching (2015), in particular Chapter 5, in which he examines factors which facilitate student learning. I'll summarise his main points about anxiety, then the implications of these for our teaching.

Richards begins by pointing out that anxiety has a negative impact of students' learning and using of the second language (Horwitz, 2010). When speaking in the second language to native speakers language users may worry about what native speakers (and others) think of their language skills. In the classroom learners may be anxious about how the lesson is meant to work: What is my role? How should I behave in group work? Have I understood the teacher's intentions? Will I answer correctly? Will I look silly in front of my friends?

(Other factors come into play, of course. My wife, a talented linguist,  tells me that at secondary school she stopped responding in class to maintain friendship with her peers who thought she was too clever!)

So anxiety can affect a student's willingness to take risks and join in with the lesson. Students sometimes report that in class anxiety just makes them clam up and forget what they know. Others say that they manage alright in class, but become anxious when using the language with speakers in the real world. Typically, they worry about making grammatical mistakes.

In a study with international students at an Australian on learner anxiety, Woodrow (2006) reported the following stress factors, in order of importance;

1. Performing in front of classmates
2. Giving an oral presentation.
3. Speaking in English to native speakers.
4. Speaking in English in classroom activities.
5. Speaking in English to strangers.

Woodrow found that these students coped with anxiety in various ways, e.g. by keeping calm, being natural, improving skills, using compensation techniques (e.g. gesture, paraphrase, simplification) and relaxation techniques.

Wright (2005) suggests some ways teachers can help students reduce anxiety:

• Increasing wait time after questions.
• Doing more open-ended questions with written answers.
• Accepting a range of answers.
• Increasing the amount of peer support and group work.
• Focusing on content, not form.
• Establishing good relationships, including involving students in discussions about learning.
• using activities such as role-play, drama and oral interpretation of texts.
• Allowing more opportunities for self-management of activities.
• Focusing on potential sources of anxiety to change perceptions.

To the above list, I would add the following points:

Knowledge and skills. Students are often (but not always) less anxious when their knowledge and skills are good. This gives them a positive view of themselves and their abilities ("self-efficacy"). I would stress the "not always" as we have all come across extremely able and knowledgeable students who are nevertheless extremely anxious about doing their best and not failing. Some of the most anxious candidates at oral exams are the most able.

A warm atmosphere. The best lessons I observed in my career were ones where there was a strongly supportive and nurturing atmosphere generated by confident teachers with a high level of pedagogical skill. Joining in was not the least bit threatening for students, on the contrary. Teachers in lessons like these are well-prepared, relaxed and do not communicate their own anxiety.

Cognitive empathy. That ability to pitch a lesson at just the right level is vital. Cognitive load is diminished, previous knowledge is used with students showing off what they can already do. If students have had lots of practice and retrieval opportunities (to use the phrase du jour) they will perform with minimal anxiety. Tasks where students know exactly what to do with clear success criteria will be more successful on the whole than open-ended ones with more chance of uncertainty and failure.

Humour. When there is humour in the room, usually generated by the teacher, relaxation is more likely to ensue and enjoyable learning will happen. Over authoritarian and strict teaching has its limitations.

Behaviour. Where behaviour routines are in place, with minimal disruption, students will be less anxious when performing in front of their peers. Achievement in this environment is celebrated, not mocked.

Questioning styles. Getting the balance of hands up and hands down questioning is surely relevant here. Hands down questioning needs managing with skill if you don't want students to panic and freeze when asked for a response. This, for me, is one argument against hands down questioning (random or otherwise). This needs weighing up against the benefits of hands down questioning in terms of formative assessment and the need to make sure every student is taking part and learning. A suitable balance is needed.

Creating a positive outlook. In the UK context (and elsewhere in anglophone countries) making sure a positive view of "otherness" is surely crucial. If the teacher reinforces this at every opportunity then students are more likely to have a positive view of the subject.

Testing. Getting the balance seems important to me. It's well established now that regular retrieval through testing, often called quizzing, is useful. Making tests too "high stakes" may cause unwanted stress. Assessing should largely just be about regular recall using exercises similar in style to regular classroom practice.

Correcting sensitively.  As Wright suggested above, I would argue that maintaining the focus on meaning as far as possible makes sense. When the focus is on correct grammar, then correction can be sensitive and usually in the form of recasts. We don't want students who are obsessed with accuracy at the expense of fluency and no doubt you've had that conversation with classes that communicating the message is more important than being absolutely accurate. Correcting students in a very overt fashion can cause them to lose face and confidence.

Using choral activities. Repeating, chanting, reading aloud or singing together are all useful exercises with low threat levels. How much do you use these as a precursor to individualised tasks such as question-answer or sentence completion?

Using praise. The advice from behaviour experts is to praise individually and not excessively. This is one way you can help build a student's confidence so that they experience less anxiety when performing in class.

Games and communicative tasks. Activities like these, when purposeful and well planned, put the focus on meaning and make language learning feel natural and useful.

Technology. For many pupils some language tasks are less stressful when technology is being used. Such students may prefer to record themselves speaking rather than performing in front of others. When listening, technology can allow students to interact with texts in non-threatening ways, for example by allowing multiple listenings to a text or instant feedback with grammatical or comprehension exercises.

In sum, the best classes you'll have are those where lots of learning is taking place in an enjoyable, low stress atmosphere. With many classes this is, I know, really hard to achieve, but it can be done with the right ingredients in place.

References

Horwitz,  E. (2010) 'Foreign and second language anxiety', Language Teaching, 43, 2.

Richards, J. C. (2015) Key Issues in Language Teaching, Cambridge: CUP.

Woodrow, L. (2006) ' Anxiety and speaking English as a second language.' RELC Journal, 37,3.

Wright, T. (2005) Classroom management in Language Education, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.