TO FLEE OR TO FIGHT: A STUDY INTO LANGUAGE ANXIETY, ITS LEVELS, CORRELATION WITH ACHIEVEMENT AND MEANS OF REDUCTION

Studying a foreign language is tightly connected with a number
of physiological and psychological phenomena related to how a
person processes, reacts to and stores knowledge about language.
According to the input hypotheses, specifically the affective filter
hypothesis, ability of a learner to acquire language is negatively
influenced by such feelings as fear or embarrassment (Krashen
S.D., 1981: 38). This special type of fear – later coined language
anxiety – experienced in a language classroom was thoroughly
examined in the 80s of the previous century by Elaine Horwitz,
who claimed that this type of nervousness can seriously
constraint the second language acquisition and learning processes
(Horwitz E.K., 1986: 125). Over the last three-four decades
language anxiety has been widely researched by both theorists
and practitioners due to the fact that the English language has
settled in the international community as the lingua franca, thus
ubiquitous learning of it is still an upward trend. More and more
universities around the world make strong emphasis on English
language programs in their curricula, considering this discipline
to be part and parcel of scoring high in all sorts of educational
ratings. At the same time, one can observe a certain scarcity of
practical research on language anxiety conducted in the context
of the Russian higher education. The purpose of this study is to
attempt to cover this gap by conducting a series of efforts aimed
at exploring whether such phenomenon as language anxiety is
applicable to the Russian higher education context, whether it can
noticeably affect the second language acquisition and learning
processes and whether it is possible to reduce the language
anxiety within the framework of a classroom. The stages
comprised 1) measuring levels of language anxiety in the cohort
of students who entered NUST MISIS in 2014 using Foreign
Language Anxiety Scale (Horwitz, 1986); 2) studying the
correlation between levels of language anxiety and achievement
in language (based on overall IELTS band); 3) conducting a focus
group with 13 students from the same cohort who demonstrated
medium and high language anxiety levels in questionnaires; 4) a
series of in-class oral activities aimed at reducing language
anxiety levels and 5) re-administering the FLCAS questionnaire
in the same group after the intervention to see if the teacher was
able to reduce the anxiety levels. This study revealed that: 1) the
majority of participants of the baseline measurement (over 60 %
out of 200) had the medium level of language anxiety; 2) the
correlation with achievement – although conspicuous and of both
positive and negative natures for different groups – proved not to
be significant; 3) the main trigger of feeling nervous in class
appears to be spontaneous speech; 4) dynamics in language
anxiety, although it appears impossible to isolate the intervention
from extraneous variables such as, for instance, learning itself,
turned out to be of both positive and negative nature (level of
language anxiety decreased with 7 students and increased with 5).
Further research into the factor of language anxiety seems
feasible as a strong presence of the latter has been identified in
the context of higher education second language learning in
Russia and no direct recommendation whether to intervene with
this affect factor or not can be given to the practitioners.
Keywords: ELT, language anxiety, IELTS, oral skills,
communication apprehension