Predictors of Foreign-Language Anxiety: Examining the ...

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The findings concerning the non-significant relationships between FL aptitude,strength of motivation and FLA, and also the very weak association of anxietywith perfectionism in the present investigation, however, should not be taken toindicate that these individual factors cannot play a part in FLA. The results pertainingto these variables may be attributable to the specific sample used in thisstudy, consisting of EFL majors - would be specialists of the English languageonly. A series of ANOVAs revealed that while participants with high-, mid-, andlow levels of FLA significantly differed with regard to their L2-related selfperceptions(F = 40.908, p < .0005), proficiency level (F = 19.103, p < .0005), anddegree of competitiveness (F = 3.722, p = .028), they did not show significant differencesin terms of their aptitude for FL learning (F = 3.116, p = .051), neither didthey in the strength of their motivation for learning English (F = 1.753, p = .178),nor in how perfectionist they were (F = 2.650, p = .075). Therefore, further researchis needed with different learner populations in various instructional settings toclarify the role of FL aptitude, motivation, and perfectionism in anxiety about L2learning and performance.ConclusionThis article examined six learner variables as potential predictors of FLA, namely,proficiency, FL aptitude, strength of motivation, L2-self-concept, competitiveness,and perfectionism. The purpose of the investigation was to test earlier assumptionsconcerning the role of these variables in FLA, which were either based onqualitative findings (competitiveness, perfectionism), or on the results of studiesinvestigating the relationship of a given variable to FLA in isolation (L2 proficiency,FL aptitude, motivation, L2-related self-perceptions). The combination ofbivariate and multivariate analyses in the present study made it possible to considerthe impact of each selected learner characteristics in its own right, as well asin the company of other learner variables, which proved useful in assessing theirimportance in participants’ FLA in a more reliable manner. As has been shown,some findings of the study have confirmed previous assumptions (L2-related selfperceptionsand competitiveness), some added new insights to earlier interpretations(proficiency), while others call for further research (perfectionism, FL aptitude,strength of motivation).The first important result of the investigation was the close link between learners’L2-related self-perceptions and the anxiety they experience in L2 situations.Although previous research has documented an inverse relationship between selfperceivedproficiency and FLA, other L2-related self-perceptions have receivedless attention. The present study found that L2-self-concept, a composite of variousL2-related self-perceptions, was the most useful predictor of first year Englishmajors’ FLA. The finding that L2-related self-perceptions were far better indicatorsof participants’ FLA than their measured proficiency in English lends empiricalsupport to the view that this type of anxiety “is not the result of a rational analysisof ones actual target language abilities” (Horwitz, 1996, p. 367). In other words,142 UPRT 2007: Empirical studies in English applied linguistics
FLA is not to be seen as merely an effect or result of poor achievement in languagelearning (Sparks et al., 2000). The multivariate analyses showed that reliance oncorrelations alone, may lead to spurious results. Had the effect of proficiency beenexamined only in isolation, the more than moderate correlation with participants’FLA scores would have suggested a more important role for this variable in learners’experience of FLA than the results of the final multiple regression model inthis study, which showed that L2-self-concept dominated L2 proficiency with respectto the prediction of FLA.Another important finding is that it was a personality variable, competitivenesswhich turned out to be the second best predictor of participants’ Englishrelatedanxiety. Not only did the present investigation lend support to qualitativefindings suggesting that learners’ anxiety about FL learning and performance maybe related to their trait of competitiveness, it also showed that it is not competitivenessitself, but rather this trait in conjunction with a negative L2-self-conceptthat can be taken as a fairly good indication that a learner is likely to experienceFLA. This was evidenced by the multiple regression finding that as much as 63.2%of the variability of first year English majors’ anxiety level was attributable to differencesin how competitive they were and how positive or negative L2-relatedself-perceptions they had.The remaining three learner characteristics, FL aptitude, perfectionism, andstrength of motivation, were not found to be predictors of L2-related anxiety inthis sample of first year English majors, as suggested by theoretical predictionsand empirical findings in some previous investigations. Students with high, mid-,and low levels of FLA in this study did not show significant differences in terms ofthese variables, therefore it will be the task of future research to further explorehow these individual learner characteristics relate to feelings of L2-related anxietyin more heterogeneous samples of different learner populations.Tóth, Zs. Predictors of foreign-language anxiety 143
Page 2 and 3: have been investigated, no previous
Page 4 and 5: Pohlman, & Bishop-Marbury, 1991; Ga
Page 6 and 7: Besides self-perceptions of TL comp
Page 8 and 9: InstrumentsSelf-report instruments
Page 10 and 11: CompetitivenessTo assess how compet
Page 12 and 13: Table 1: Correlations between cogni
Page 14 and 15: large effect size. The estimated co
Page 16 and 17: As for the other significant predic
Page 18 and 19: English majors’ self-appraisal of
Page 22 and 23: ReferencesAida, Y. (1994). Examinat
Page 24 and 25: Horwitz, E. K. (1996). Even teacher
Page 26: Wine, J. D. (1982). Evaluation anxi

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