Foreign language anxiety in the Basque Country: a comparison of high school and university students

Abstract

Anxiety has been widely studied in the field of second language acquisition (SLA), as it is one of the main obstacles that students have to overcome in their language learning process. This paper presents an explanation of the term ‘anxiety’ and provides definitions of different types of anxiety such as debilitating, facilitating, state and trait anxiety. It also explains the term situation-specific anxiety, a type that includes the phenomenon studied in this paper: foreign language anxiety. Studies on this topic started more than 50 years ago, but it was the paper written by Horwitz et al. (1986) that marked a starting point, and research began to flourish. Apart from presenting their theoretical framework, these scholars proposed an instrument to measure FLA: the foreign language classroom anxiety scale (FLCAS). FLA has been shown to negatively affect students' achievement and performance, and speaking has been found to be the most anxiety-provoking skill. The causes of language learning anxiety have not yet been determined, but the possible sources of FLA have been divided into three groups: learner characteristics, teacher characteristics and classroom characteristics. Because it is a complex issue, many variables have been analysed, but in my study, I focus on one of them: age, as the results of previous studies were contradictory. Therefore, this study aims to shed some light on the correlation between age (or education level) and FLA by making a comparison between the anxiety levels of high school and university students of the Basque Country. The participants of the study were 104 university students and 70 high school students who were studying English as a foreign language (EFL). Data was collected through a questionnaire that included a modified version of the FLCAS and two open questions, where the students had to answer which were the situations that provoked them most and least anxiety. The findings of the study showed that high school students were more prone to experience FLA, but both in the quantitative and qualitative parts of the questionnaire, students were concerned about their ability to speak in the foreign language (FL) regardless of their education level. In order to overcome this problem, teachers should create a relaxed and friendly environment in the classroom so that the learners feel more confident. In conclusion, different variables need to be taken into account to examine how anxiety affects students, since anxiety levels may vary depending on them.