Elaine K. Horwitz

Issues and options in language teaching

This study analyzes the main issues in language teaching practice, defines the parameters within which practitioners have to make their choices and identifies controversial areas. It aims to provide an overview of the entire field of second language education.

Language Anxiety: Differentiating Writing and Speaking Components.

This study investigated the links between second language classroom anxiety and second language writing anxiety as well as their associations with second language speaking and writing achievement. The results indicate that second language classroom anxiety, operationalized by Horwitz, Horwitz, and Copes Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale, and second language writing anxiety, measured by a modified second language version of Daly and Millers Writing Apprehension Test, are two related but independent constructs. The findings suggest that second language classroom anxiety is a more general type of anxietyabout learning a second language with a strong speaking anxiety element, whereas second language writing anxiety is a language-skill-specific anxiety. Nevertheless, low self-confidence seems to be an important component of both anxiety constructs.

Foreign language reading anxiety

Whereas most discussions of foreign language (FL) anxiety have centered on the difficulties caused by anxiety with respect to oral performance, this article discusses the possibility of anxiety in response to foreign or second language reading. It introduces the construct of FL reading anxiety, offers a scale for its measurement, and reports on a preliminary study of reading anxiety in 30 intact first-semester classes of Spanish, Russian, and Japanese. The study found that contrary to previous teacher intuitions, reading in a FL can be anxiety provoking to some students. Whereas general FL anxiety has been found to be independent of target language, levels of reading anxiety were found to vary by target language and seem to be related to the specific writing systems. In addition, students’ reading anxiety levels increased with their perceptions of the difficulty of reading in their FL, and their grades decreased in conjunction with their levels of reading anxiety and general FL anxiety.

Language Learning and Perfectionism: Anxious and Non-Anxious Language Learners' Reactions to Their Own Oral Performance.

This interview study sought to clarify the relationship between foreign language anxiety and perfectionism. The comments of anxious and non-anxious language learners were audiorecorded as they watched themselves interact in a videotaped oral interview. By examining the reactions of the language learners to their actual oral performance and analyzing the audiotapes for instances of perfectionism, evidence was gathered suggesting that anxious and non-anxious learners differ in their personal performance standards, procrastination, fear of evaluation, and concern over errors. Because the results of this study indicated a link between language anxiety and perfectionism, the article ends with a discussion of procedures that have been used to overcome perfectionism and that may also be helpful to anxious foreign language learners.

Cultural and Situational Influences on Foreign Language Learners' Beliefs About Language Learning: A Review of BALLI Studies.

Abstract Understanding learner beliefs about language learning is essential to understanding learner strategies and planning appropriate language instruction; however, to date there has been no examination of how these beliefs may differ across learner groups. This paper reviews representative studies (including American learners of French, Spanish, German, and Japanese, US university instructors of French, and Korean, Taiwanese, and Turkish heritage English as a Foreign Language English [EFL] students) using the “Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory (BALLI)” to identify similarities and differences across cultural groups. Although instances of differing beliefs between and among the American, Korean, and Turkish heritage groups were identified, an examination of the responses to individual BALLI items did not yield clear-cut cultural differences in beliefs. The differences between the instructors of French and American learners suggest that beliefs may vary based on age, stage of learning, and professional status. Several of the differences identified in the various American groups and the two groups of Korean and Turkish heritage learners may be more clearly attributable to differences in learning circumstances than culture.

Foreign and Second Language Anxiety.

The possibility that anxiety interferes with language learning has long interested scholars, language teachers, and language learners themselves. It is intuitive that anxiety would inhibit the learning and/or production of a second language (L2). The important term in the last sentence is ‘anxiety’. The concept of anxiety is itself multi-faceted, and psychologists have differentiated a number of types of anxiety including trait anxiety, state anxiety, achievement anxiety, and facilitative-debilitative anxiety. With such a wide variety of anxiety-types, it is not surprising that early studies on the relationship between ‘anxiety’ and achievement provided mixed and confusing results, and Scovel (1978 – this timeline) rightly noted that anxiety is ‘not a simple, unitary construct that can be comfortably quantified into ‘high’ or ‘low’ amounts’ (p. 137). Scovel did not, however, anticipate the identification in the mid-1980s of a unique form of anxiety that some people experience in response to learning and/or using an L2. Typically referred to as language anxiety or foreign language anxiety (FLA), this anxiety is categorized as a situation-specific anxiety, similar in type to other familiar manifestations of anxiety such as stage fright or test anxiety.

The Effect of Induced Anxiety on the Denotative and Interpretive Content of Second Language Speech

N Previous research on anxiety and foreign language learning (see Scovel, 1978, for a full review of the literature) has focused primarily on the effects of anxiety on overall proficiency in a second language, which is typically measured by discrete-skills tasks or end-of-course grades. However, such measures of proficiency are likely to obscure some of the more subtle effects of anxiety on second language performance. For example, anxiety might affect the content and elaboration of second language speech as well as overall fluency and grammaticality. Indeed, research on the effects of writing apprehension has found that native-speaking students with higher levels of writing anxiety write shorter compositions, use less intense words, and qualify their writing less (Daly, 1977; Daly & Miller, 1975). If nonanxious second language students are more apt to attempt ambitious topics which require more complicated explication than their level of proficiency permits, they may actually appear to be less proficient than students whose anxiety restricts them to safer topics. Yet the nonanxious students may be the ones communicating at the higher level. Source of variation in the content of second language performance is, however, a relatively unexplored topic. For instance, Kleinmann (1977) found that the grammatical structures used by ESL learners varied with their level of facilitating anxiety; the informational content of their language was not examined, however. This study (Steinberg, 1982) explored the effect of induced anxiety on the content of oral descriptions, in a second language, of stimulus pictures. It was hypothesized that subjects undergoing an anxiety treatment and those undergoing a nonanxiety treatment would be differentiated by the proportion of interpretive to denotative content in their descriptions, with the anxiety group responding less interpretively. Since the study dealt with environmentally manipulated anxiety, it addressed an area readily susceptible to the intervention of the classroom teacher, that is, the atmosphere provided for student communication.

Student affective reactions and the teaching and learning of foreign languages

Abstract This chapter argues for the recognition of the importance of student affective reactions in discussions of second language learning and teaching. It is argued that language learning is a particularly intense and ego-involving undertaking which requires a positive emotional stance on the part of the learner. The chapter reviews literature on how affective reactions — particularly motivation for language learning, foreign language anxiety, and student beliefs about language learning — impact on the language learning process and makes suggestions as to how teachers can promote positive affective characteristics. As affective variables represent the learners willingness to engage in the activities necessary to develop second language proficiency, it is essential that teachers make the emotional needs of their students an instructional priority.

Images and options in the language classroom

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Teachers and Students, Students and Teachers: An Ever-Evolving Partnership

This article provides a historical overview of Modern Language Journal (MLJ) articles that describe the teacher-learner relationship. From the earliest issues of the MLJ, authors have noted the importance of recognizing and responding to individual learner differences. This review focuses on how language learners have been portrayed in the MLJ and the implications of these portrayals for language teaching. It, thus, addresses the characteristics that language learners have been seen to possess and how language teachers have been urged to respond to these characteristics. Specific topics include foreign language aptitude, motivation and other emotional responses to language learning, reasons for student attrition, and advice for modifying instruction for different learner-types. This review also considers a number of articles written by language learners and addressed to their language teachers. Several recommendations are offered, including reinstitution of learner-authored articles in the MLJ and closer attention to the learners voice in reports of classroom-based research.