La ansiedad y la presencia de un desconocido en una clase de lenguas extranjeras

Abstract

Despite a plethora of information on the topic of anxiety in academic settings, the ways that anxiety affect student performance remains unclear, especially in the foreign language classroom. The present paper describes a study that was conducted in which American students in a university-level Spanish class gave insight into various aspects of their anxiety. Results reveal that students who admit to having both high and low levels of anxiety performed worse on a grammar test than students who admitted to feeling “normal.” Students also proved to be poor judges of their own performance as their accuracy was compared to a post-task questionnaire. The presence of a person other than the teacher did not affect the students’ performance. Finally, despite its reputation for being anxiety inducing, the students surveyed ranked foreign languages as less stressful than other academic subjects. Results indicate that instead of aiming to remove all anxiety in a foreign language class, instructors might aspire to make students feel as normal as possible.