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

Besides self-perceptions of TL competence, other L2-related beliefs have alsobeen suggested as potential contributors to FLA (Horwitz, 1988, 1990, 1995;Young, 1991). In a preliminary investigation Horwitz and Sadow (in preparation)found that learners with high levels of FLA tended to believe they lacked FL aptitude,expressed doubts about their ability to achieve complete mastery of a foreignlanguage, and had a greater tendency to consider language learning a difficulttask than their less anxious peers (in Horwitz, 1990), which findings are in linewith those reported in a later study by Horwitz (1995). Other investigations havealso indicated a link between learners’ level of perceived difficulty with FL studyand language anxiety (e.g., Ganschow et al., 1994).Personality and FLAThe learner’s personality has also been considered as a potential contributing factorto L2-related anxiety (MacIntyre, 1999; Young, 1991, 1994), though relativelyfew empirical studies have been conducted to enquire into the relationship betweenFLA and personality characteristics.PerfectionismIt was an interview study with highly-anxious language learners which first suggestedthat perfectionism may be related to FLA, as most interviewees reportedbeing overly perfectionistic: aiming at a perfect accent and native-speaker fluency(Price, 1991). Another interview study, designed to clarify the interaction of perfectionismand anxiety, obtained evidence for the link between the two constructsin that anxious vs. non-anxious participants were found to differ in terms of theirself-reports and display of perfectionist tendencies (Gregersen & Horwitz, 2002).The anxious group seemed to be characterized (1) by setting excessively high personalstandards for performance, such as speaking flawlessly, without grammaticaland pronunciation errors, and as easily as native speakers, and (2) by overlycritical self-evaluations, manifest in overreaction to errors and dissatisfaction withless than perfect performance. These findings suggest that perfectionist languagelearners, who pursue an idealized rather than a realistic level of proficiency andwho are unable to take L2 imperfections in stride, are more likely candidates forexperiencing language learning anxiety (see also Foss & Reitzel, 1991; Horwitz,1990, 1996; Phillips, 1992).128 UPRT 2007: Empirical studies in English applied linguistics