24 production, feelings of being put on the spot, the pace of the class, and the
element of being evaluated i.e., fear of negative evaluation to be anxiety- producing to students.
” Young 1999 emphasizes that putting the learner “on the spot” in front of their classmates without allowing adequate preparation is also
source of anxiety for many students. Moreover, Oxford 1999 emphasizes learning and teaching styles as a potential source of language anxiety. If the
teacher ’s teaching style and a student’s learning style are not compatible, “style
wars” can trigger or heighten anxiety levels.
5 Classmates
According to Horwitz et al. 1986, anxiety especially FNE is triggered not only by the teacher as a fluent speaker but also the classmates. Koch and Terrell
1991 similarly state that speaking in front of the peers is another source of anxiety in learning a foreign language. In her study, Young 1990 investigated
the students’ perspectives on anxiety and speaking. The result of her study revealed that, in a language class, the students felt most anxious when they had to
speak in front of their peers. Horwitz et al. 1986 suggest that language classrooms are threatening in part because students are often required to
communicate in front of their peers in an unfamiliar language and are often publicly evaluated while doing so.
d. Manifestation of FLA
According to Oxford 1999, p. 66, anxiety in general and FLA in particular can have
“physical, psychological and behavioral manifestation.” The
manifestation can differ from one to another. Physical symptoms include bodily reactions such as rapid heartbeat, muscle tension, dry mouth, and excessive
25
perspiration. Psychological symptoms include feelings of helplessness, problems
with concentration such as going blank and inability to concentrate, as well as memory difficulties such as poor memory recall and retention. Moreover,
behavioral symptoms include physical actions such as squirming, fidgeting,
playing with hair or clothing nervously touching objects, stuttering or stammering displaying jittery behavior, being unable to reproduce the sounds or intonation of
the target language even after repeated practice. More importantly, behavioral symptoms of anxiety can be manifested in negative avoidance behaviors like
inappropriate silence, monosyllabic or non-committal responses, lack of eye contact, unwillingness to participate, coming late, arriving unprepared, showing
indifference, cutting class, and withdrawal from the course. In addition, other
signs might reflect language anxiety depending on the culture. The symptoms are
excessive study, perfectionism, hostility, excessive competitiveness, as well as excessive self-effacement and self-
criticism e.g. “I am so stupid”.
e. Students’ Strategies to Cope with FLA
Folkman and Moskowitz 2004 claim that coping is accomplished through the thoughts and behaviors used to manage the internal and external demands of
situations that are appraised as stressful. Despite the absence of direct empirical work that deals with strategies that students use to cope with their FLA, extensive
research has been done to help students cope with their anxieties in academic setting Kondo and Ying-Ling, 2004. Generally, three approaches to the
alleviation of anxiety are cognitive, affective and behavioral approaches Hembree, 1988 in Kondo Ying-Ling, 2004. These three intervention
26 approaches provide the basis for the types of strategies students may use to tackle
their language anxiety. According to Kondo and Ying-Ling 2004, if students think that their
cognition worry, preoccupations, and concerns creates anxiety, they may attempt to suppress or alter the thought processes related to language learning. Those who
believe that somatic arousal physical responses to anxiety is the main concern may find ways to ease bodily reactions and tension. If students assume that
anxiety arises because they lack the necessary academic skills, they may study harder. However, if students perceive that their anxieties are too much to cope
with, they may not invest effort in reducing the anxiety. In their study which was designed to develop a typology of strategies that Japanese students use to cope
with English language learning anxiety, Kondo and Ying-Ling 2004, p. 258 identified 70 basic tactics and put them into five strategy categories. Those
include: 1 Preparation e.g. studying hard, trying to obtain good summaries of
lecture notes, 2 Relaxation e.g. taking a deep breath, trying to calm down, 3 Positive thinking e.g. imagining oneself giving a great
performance, trying to enjoy the tension, 4 Peer seeking e.g. looking for others who are having difficulty controlling their anxieties, asking other
students if they understand the class, and 5 Resignation e.g. giving up, sleeping in class p. 47.
According to Kondo and Ying-Ling 2004, preparation can be considered a behavioral strategy because it focuses on behavioral components of language
learning that are related to effective performance in class. Relaxation is characterized by its affective quality in that it aims at alleviating bodily tension
associated with emotional arousal. Positive thinking and peer seeking are attempts PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
27 to suppress or alter problematic thought processes related to language learning,
and thus can be subsumed into cognitive strategies.
f. Effects of FLA
MacIntyre et al. 1998 lists five major effects of FLA in language learning and performance. First, academically, FLA is one of the best predictors of
language proficiency since high levels of FLA are associated with low levels of academic achievement in foreign language learning. The second effect is the
social effect. Students with high anxiety level are not interested to take part in interpersonal communication with others. Third, cognitively, FLA can occur at
any stage of language acquisition. FLA can become an affective filters that prevents certain information
from entering a student’s cognitive processing system. Fourth, FLA arousal influence the quality of communication output as the
retrieval of information may be interrupted when students get anxious. Finally, personally, language learning experience could, under some circumstances,
become a traumatic experience. This kind of unpleasant experience may dramatically disturb one’s self-esteem or self-confidence as a student.
3. Relationship between Motivation and FLA
Both anxiety and motivation play fundamental parts in English learning. They are closely related to each other in second and foreign language learning
Liu Huang, 2011. Various levels of foreign language learners’
accomplishment might be influenced by anxiety and motivation. Motivation is one of the factors that influence the success of language learning. Language
anxiety, however, often works against motivation to learn. It is thus important to PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
28 review the relationship between motivation and anxiety in terms of students’
English learning achievement. The relationship between language motivation and language anxiety has
been investigated by some researchers. Language anxiety was found to be negatively related to motivation Gardner et al., 1987; Hashimoto, 2002; Yang,
Liu Wu, 2010; Liu Huang, 2011. Clement, Dornyei and Noels 1994 found that learners who are more motivated to learn language are usually less anxious
learners who have better previous experiences, who evaluate their own proficiency more highly and who consider the learning tasks are less difficult.
According to Noels, Clement and Pelletier 2001, the more learners feel amotivated, the less effort they will expand and the more anxiety they will feel.
Another study conducted by Liu and Cheng 2014 also found that Taiwanese university freshmen’s anxiety levels were significantly lower when students had a
higher degree of motivation. The finding of Liu and Cheng ’s study also revealed
that the combination of communication apprehension and fear of negative evaluation acted as primary source language anxiety in the Taiwanese EFL
classroom. Tahernezhad, Behjat and Kargar 2014 investigated the degree of anxiety
among Iranian intermediate EFL learners and its relation to their motivation. To the end, a total number of 80 EFL learners 35 males and 45 females were
selected through cluster random sampling from two language classes at Islamic Azad University in Iran as the participants in this study. The instruments used to
collect the data from the participants were the Foreign Language Learning Anxiety Scale FLCAS and Gardner’s 1985 AttitudeMotivation Test Battery
