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Since the 1980s, more attention is paid to anxiety, one of the most important affective variables influencing foreign language learning. This section starts with some general discussions about anxiety before moving to a review of the enormous literature related to foreign language anxiety.
Reviewing the literature, a wide variety of definitions of anxiety can be found in the fields of psychology and education.
Anxiety is commonly described by psychologists as a state of apprehension, a vague fear that is only indirectly associated with an object. From a neurobiological perspective, Spieberger defines anxiety as “the subjective feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness and worry associated with an arousal of the automatic nervous systems.”. May believed that “anxiety is the apprehension cued off by a threat to some value that the individual holds essential to his existence as a personality”. Leary offered the definition of anxiety, “anxiety refers to a cognitive-affective response characterized by physiological arousal (indicative of sympathetic nervous system activation) and apprehension reg摘自：本科毕业论文结论www.618jyw.com
arding a potentially negative outcome that the individual perceives as impeding”. Spielberge described anxiety as “the subjective feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness and worry that are experienced by an individual”.
From the above definition, we can conclude that anxiety is a complex concept, dependent upon not only one’s feelings of self-efficacy but also appraisals concerning the potential and perceived threats inherent in certain situation. These many appraisals coupled with the influence of task-irrelevant processing can affect the learning process, often in ways that students are not even aware of.
Classification of Anxiety
MacIntyre and Gardner he found it useful to delineate three perspectives from which anxiety has been investigated in a number of different areas, including language-learning context: trait anxiety; state anxiety and situation-specific anxiety.
Trait anxiety is defined as an individual’s likelihood of becoming anxious in any situation. It refers to a relatively stable individual differences in anxiety proneness, i.e., in the tendency to perceive stresul situations as dangerous or threatening and to respond to such situations with differential elevations in anxiety state. In terms of this perspective, anxiety is regarded as a general personality trait and a stable predisposition that is experienced in a widely range of situation. Trait anxiety has been shown to impair cognitive functioning, to disrupt memory, to lead to oidance behiors, and to he several other effects. A considerable amount of literature relating to trait anxiety has been witnessed in the past few decades. Although the trait anxiety perspective has been effective in describing the effects of generalized anxiety, its implications to specific situations, critics concerning the trait anxiety also arise. It is argued that traits are meaningless unless they are considered in interaction with situations. The functioning of the trait anxiety can’t be separated from the reactions over a number of situations. For most individuals, some situations will provoke anxiety while others will promote feelings of relaxation. Within a large group of people, the situations provoking anxiety will differ, even among individuals showing similar trait anxiety and measures of performance might be attributed to a form of eraging over these situations.State anxiety is defined as a multimodal emotional state characterized by subjective, consciously perceived feelings of tension and apprehension accompanied by heightened autonomic nervous system activity. State anxiety is a blend of the trait and situational approaches. It is apprehension experienced at a particular moment in time, for example, prior to taking examinations. So, individuals who are prone to taking experience anxiety in general (i.e. who he high levels oftrait anxiety) show greater elevations of state anxiety in stresul situations. The moderately strong correlation (approximately r=60) usually found between state and trait anxiety indicated that increased levels of trait anxiety are associated with higher state anxiety.
Situation-specific anxiety, an alternative concept to trait anxiety and state anxiety, refers to the respondents’ emotional reactions in a well-defined situation such as speaking, writing examination and listening class. It can be seen as trait anxiety measures limited to a given context. It is also closely related to state anxiety. This perspective particularly concentrates on relatively independent anxiety-provoking situations. This approach examines the specific forms of anxiety that occur consistently over time within a given situation. It can offer more to the understanding of anxiety because the respondents are queried about various aspects of situation. In the field of second language acquisition, MacIntyre and Gardner draw upon the work done by Spielberge to make an additional distinction, situation-specific anxiety. It has been considered as suitably applicable to second language acquisition research. Horwitz and Cope he described foreign language anxiety as a situation-specific anxiety. This thesis also studies foreign language anxiety as a situation-specific anxiety.
A number of theoretical models of anxiety he been proposed. These theories provide a comprehensive account of anxiety that reflects its multi-component nature and one particular aspect of anxiety can be learned from physiological, psychodynamic, behioral and cognitive approaches.
Many researchers he developed neurological and biochemical models of anxiety, According to Carlson and Hatfield, anxious people are expected to experience “elevated heart rate and blood pressure, increased breathing rate, lowered surface blood flow, increased muscular blood flow…higher epinephrine levels, higher urinary and plaa corticosteroid hormone levels, suppressed源于：论文格式要求www.618jyw.com
digestive reactions, and additional responses indicative of heightened arousal, vigilance, and readiness for action” According to Gray’s biological model of anxiety, “the major function of the behioral inhibition system (BIS) is to monitor ongoing behior, dhecking continuously that it coincides with expectations ” Thus, when unexpected events occur, anxiety is inevitable because of the simultaneous accompaniments of increased attention to the behioral inhibition. Based on the model, individuals are especially susceptible to anxiety.From a psychodynamic orientation, many theorists focus on the experiential and motivational properties of anxiety. Freud saw anxiety as “a signal of danger…Symptoms are created in order to remove…the situation of danger…Anxiety would be the fundamental phenomenon and the central problem of neurosis” In Freud’s opinion, anxiety warns the ego to the fact that repressed, unconscious wishes are to break into consciousness. In order to keep the individual’s emotional stability, they may use a great deal of defense mechanis, such as denial, displacement, regression, rationalization and oidance to deal with anxiety. The succesul ego uses these defense mechanis to change the energy of anxiety into useful behior. But, when anxiety becomes so strong that the defenses are overwhelmed or when one or another defense mechani is carried too far, psychopathological symptoms develop in an effort to cope with the surging anxiety.
Theorists such as Watson, Mowrer, and Miller advocated researching emotional behior from the observable, measurable aspects. Behioral theories of anxiety provides accounts of how people “learn” to behe emotionally based on a conditioning framework. According to the conditioning model proposed by Watson and Morganan initially neutral stimulus correlated with an adverse experience (the unconditioned stimulus), which results in anxiety (the unconditioned response), will become associated with an ersive experience (become conditioned stimulus) and hence elicit a similar reaction (the conditioned response). The anxiety reaction is the stimulus similar to an unconditioned stimulus. One extension of the conditioning theory of anxiety is the two-process approach to anxiety. Mowrer recognized the energizing property of anxiety in motivating behior that tends to oid or prevent fear stimulus. The classical conditioning theory of anxiety provided explanations for how people acquire fear reactions and how they learn to deal with them. The two-process approach additionally provided explanations for oidance behior. Following from the two-process approach to anxiety, fear reactions will become a source of tension that motivate frightened people to find ways to reduce their anxiety. The frightene源于：论文参考文献格式www.618jyw.com
d people may either try to oid anxiety or attempt to escape. Dollar and Miller’s psychodynamic behior theory of anxiety provided another account of how anxiety is acquired and how it becomes associated with certain objects and events. According to Dollar and Miller, anxiety begins with the association of pain with a particular stimulus. Anxiety may arise through conflict. Dollar and Miller conceptualized conflict as deriving from two tendencies: approach and oidance. It is common for people to experience anxiety when they wish to approach and to oid approach-oidance conflict.More recent theories of anxiety he focused on the thinking of cognitive psychology. These theories introduced the cognitive component to the structure of anxiety. According to Liebert and Morris’s, two-component conceptualization of test anxiety (i.e., anxiety related to test taking), the experience of anxiety is separable into at least two major components: a cognitive component (i.e., worry) and an emotional component (i.e., emotionality). Worry refers to the “cognitive elements of the anxiety experience, suchas negative expectations and cognitive concerns about oneself, the situation at hand, and potential consequences.” Emotionality refers to a person’s “perception of the physiological-affective elements of the anxiety experience, that is, indications of autonomic arousal and unpleasant feeling states such as nervousness or tension”. Although worry and emotionality are related, tendencies toward worry are assumed to be “learned through individual experiences of success and failure, through evaluation and feedback from others, and through observation of others’ self-statements” in the face of similar stresul situations. Other cognitive researchers he paid more attention to the role of people’s expectations in the development of anxiety. Bandura distinguished two major types of ex源于：论文格式字体要求www.618jyw.com
pectancies in shaping emotional behior: one is self-efficacy (i.e., judgments of one’s capability to perform specific actions in specific situations succesully); and another is response-outcome expectancies (i.e., one’s expectations regarding the likely consequences of performing an action). According to Bandura’s self-efficacy theory, those who think they are capable of managing specific actions may not fear or oid; however, those who doubt their ability may feel anxious. Many other cognitive researchers he placed emphasis on the close association between the more general type of self-related cognitive expectancies and the experience of anxiety. Covington, Omelich, and Schwarzer indicated that diminished ability perceptions and diminis hed perceptions of self-worth are key factors in the experience of anxiety and in the detrimental effects of anxiety on performance. Epsteinbelieved that the self-esteem is an important source of anxiety. Carver and Scheier emphasized the importance of confidence in coping with anxiety. These researchers contended that confident people tend to put aside anxiety symptoms and to cope with anxiety, while doubtful people respond instead. That is to say, people respond to anxiety in particular depends on their level of confidence. Pekrun proposed an expectancy-value theory of anxiety by intergrating, systematizing and enlarging some of the assumptions of expectancy theories of anxiety. According to Pekrun’s theory, anxiety is fuction of multiplicative combinations of total expectancy and total valence. Beck et al. explained the development and maintenance of anxiety in terms of cognitive schemas and automatic thoughts typical of anxiety states. They maintain that when a threat is perceived, the relevant cognitive schemas are activated to evaluate and assign meaning to the event.Bibliography:
Ellis, R. (1994). Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
Kim, Joo-hae. (2000). Foreign language listening anxiety: A study of Korean students learning English. Unpublished ph. D dissertation Austin: University of Texas.
[3] Leary. (1983). Anxiety, Cognition, and Behior: In Search of a Broader Perspective. In Leary, M. R. Communication, Cognition, and Anxiety. Beverly Hills: Sage.
[4] MacIntyre, P. D. & Gardner, R.C.(1991a). Methods and Results in the Study of Anxiety and Language Learning: A Review of the Literature. Language Learning, 41, 85-117.
[5] McLaughlin, B. Rosan, T. McLeod, B.(1983). Second language learning : An information processing perspective. Language Learning, 33, 135-158.
[6] Mischel, W. & Peake, P. K. (1982). Beyond d é j à vu in the search for cross-situational consistency. Psychological Review, 89, 730-755.
[7]Scovel, T.(1991). The effect of affect on foreign language learning: A review of the anxiety research. In E.K Hor源于：免费论文查重www.618jyw.com
witz & D. J. Young (Eds), Language anxiety(pp.15-24). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
[8] Spielberger. C. D. (1976). The nature and measurement of anxiety. In C. D. Spielberger & R. dinz-Guerrero (Eds.) Cross- cultural anxiety: Vol. 1(pp. 3-12). Washington, DC: Hemisphere.
[9] Spielberger. C. D.(1983). Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-From Y). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.
[10] Steinberg, F. S. & Horwitz, E. K. (1986). The effect of induced anxiety on the denotative and interpretive content of second language speech. TESOL Quarterly, 20, 131-136.
[11]Tobias, S. (1986). Anxiety and cognitive processing of instruction. In R. Schwarzer (Ed.), Self-related cognition in anxiety and motivation (pp. 35-54). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
[12] Yuh-show Cheng.(1998). Examination of Two Anxiety Constructs: Second Language Class Anxiety and Second Language Writing Anxiety. Unpublished ph. D dissertation. Austin: University of Texas.
Reviewing the literature, a wide variety of definitions of anxiety can be found in the fields of psychology and education.
Anxiety is commonly described by psychologists as a state of apprehension, a vague fear that is only indirectly associated with an object. From a neurobiological perspective, Spieberger defines anxiety as “the subjective feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness and worry associated with an arousal of the automatic nervous systems.”. May believed that “anxiety is the apprehension cued off by a threat to some value that the individual holds essential to his existence as a personality”. Leary offered the definition of anxiety, “anxiety refers to a cognitive-affective response characterized by physiological arousal (indicative of sympathetic nervous system activation) and apprehension reg摘自：本科毕业论文结论www.618jyw.com
arding a potentially negative outcome that the individual perceives as impeding”. Spielberge described anxiety as “the subjective feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness and worry that are experienced by an individual”.
From the above definition, we can conclude that anxiety is a complex concept, dependent upon not only one’s feelings of self-efficacy but also appraisals concerning the potential and perceived threats inherent in certain situation. These many appraisals coupled with the influence of task-irrelevant processing can affect the learning process, often in ways that students are not even aware of.
Classification of Anxiety
MacIntyre and Gardner he found it useful to delineate three perspectives from which anxiety has been investigated in a number of different areas, including language-learning context: trait anxiety; state anxiety and situation-specific anxiety.
Trait anxiety is defined as an individual’s likelihood of becoming anxious in any situation. It refers to a relatively stable individual differences in anxiety proneness, i.e., in the tendency to perceive stresul situations as dangerous or threatening and to respond to such situations with differential elevations in anxiety state. In terms of this perspective, anxiety is regarded as a general personality trait and a stable predisposition that is experienced in a widely range of situation. Trait anxiety has been shown to impair cognitive functioning, to disrupt memory, to lead to oidance behiors, and to he several other effects. A considerable amount of literature relating to trait anxiety has been witnessed in the past few decades. Although the trait anxiety perspective has been effective in describing the effects of generalized anxiety, its implications to specific situations, critics concerning the trait anxiety also arise. It is argued that traits are meaningless unless they are considered in interaction with situations. The functioning of the trait anxiety can’t be separated from the reactions over a number of situations. For most individuals, some situations will provoke anxiety while others will promote feelings of relaxation. Within a large group of people, the situations provoking anxiety will differ, even among individuals showing similar trait anxiety and measures of performance might be attributed to a form of eraging over these situations.State anxiety is defined as a multimodal emotional state characterized by subjective, consciously perceived feelings of tension and apprehension accompanied by heightened autonomic nervous system activity. State anxiety is a blend of the trait and situational approaches. It is apprehension experienced at a particular moment in time, for example, prior to taking examinations. So, individuals who are prone to taking experience anxiety in general (i.e. who he high levels oftrait anxiety) show greater elevations of state anxiety in stresul situations. The moderately strong correlation (approximately r=60) usually found between state and trait anxiety indicated that increased levels of trait anxiety are associated with higher state anxiety.
Situation-specific anxiety, an alternative concept to trait anxiety and state anxiety, refers to the respondents’ emotional reactions in a well-defined situation such as speaking, writing examination and listening class. It can be seen as trait anxiety measures limited to a given context. It is also closely related to state anxiety. This perspective particularly concentrates on relatively independent anxiety-provoking situations. This approach examines the specific forms of anxiety that occur consistently over time within a given situation. It can offer more to the understanding of anxiety because the respondents are queried about various aspects of situation. In the field of second language acquisition, MacIntyre and Gardner draw upon the work done by Spielberge to make an additional distinction, situation-specific anxiety. It has been considered as suitably applicable to second language acquisition research. Horwitz and Cope he described foreign language anxiety as a situation-specific anxiety. This thesis also studies foreign language anxiety as a situation-specific anxiety.
A number of theoretical models of anxiety he been proposed. These theories provide a comprehensive account of anxiety that reflects its multi-component nature and one particular aspect of anxiety can be learned from physiological, psychodynamic, behioral and cognitive approaches.
Many researchers he developed neurological and biochemical models of anxiety, According to Carlson and Hatfield, anxious people are expected to experience “elevated heart rate and blood pressure, increased breathing rate, lowered surface blood flow, increased muscular blood flow…higher epinephrine levels, higher urinary and plaa corticosteroid hormone levels, suppressed源于：论文格式要求www.618jyw.com
digestive reactions, and additional responses indicative of heightened arousal, vigilance, and readiness for action” According to Gray’s biological model of anxiety, “the major function of the behioral inhibition system (BIS) is to monitor ongoing behior, dhecking continuously that it coincides with expectations ” Thus, when unexpected events occur, anxiety is inevitable because of the simultaneous accompaniments of increased attention to the behioral inhibition. Based on the model, individuals are especially susceptible to anxiety.From a psychodynamic orientation, many theorists focus on the experiential and motivational properties of anxiety. Freud saw anxiety as “a signal of danger…Symptoms are created in order to remove…the situation of danger…Anxiety would be the fundamental phenomenon and the central problem of neurosis” In Freud’s opinion, anxiety warns the ego to the fact that repressed, unconscious wishes are to break into consciousness. In order to keep the individual’s emotional stability, they may use a great deal of defense mechanis, such as denial, displacement, regression, rationalization and oidance to deal with anxiety. The succesul ego uses these defense mechanis to change the energy of anxiety into useful behior. But, when anxiety becomes so strong that the defenses are overwhelmed or when one or another defense mechani is carried too far, psychopathological symptoms develop in an effort to cope with the surging anxiety.
Theorists such as Watson, Mowrer, and Miller advocated researching emotional behior from the observable, measurable aspects. Behioral theories of anxiety provides accounts of how people “learn” to behe emotionally based on a conditioning framework. According to the conditioning model proposed by Watson and Morganan initially neutral stimulus correlated with an adverse experience (the unconditioned stimulus), which results in anxiety (the unconditioned response), will become associated with an ersive experience (become conditioned stimulus) and hence elicit a similar reaction (the conditioned response). The anxiety reaction is the stimulus similar to an unconditioned stimulus. One extension of the conditioning theory of anxiety is the two-process approach to anxiety. Mowrer recognized the energizing property of anxiety in motivating behior that tends to oid or prevent fear stimulus. The classical conditioning theory of anxiety provided explanations for how people acquire fear reactions and how they learn to deal with them. The two-process approach additionally provided explanations for oidance behior. Following from the two-process approach to anxiety, fear reactions will become a source of tension that motivate frightened people to find ways to reduce their anxiety. The frightene源于：论文参考文献格式www.618jyw.com
d people may either try to oid anxiety or attempt to escape. Dollar and Miller’s psychodynamic behior theory of anxiety provided another account of how anxiety is acquired and how it becomes associated with certain objects and events. According to Dollar and Miller, anxiety begins with the association of pain with a particular stimulus. Anxiety may arise through conflict. Dollar and Miller conceptualized conflict as deriving from two tendencies: approach and oidance. It is common for people to experience anxiety when they wish to approach and to oid approach-oidance conflict.More recent theories of anxiety he focused on the thinking of cognitive psychology. These theories introduced the cognitive component to the structure of anxiety. According to Liebert and Morris’s, two-component conceptualization of test anxiety (i.e., anxiety related to test taking), the experience of anxiety is separable into at least two major components: a cognitive component (i.e., worry) and an emotional component (i.e., emotionality). Worry refers to the “cognitive elements of the anxiety experience, suchas negative expectations and cognitive concerns about oneself, the situation at hand, and potential consequences.” Emotionality refers to a person’s “perception of the physiological-affective elements of the anxiety experience, that is, indications of autonomic arousal and unpleasant feeling states such as nervousness or tension”. Although worry and emotionality are related, tendencies toward worry are assumed to be “learned through individual experiences of success and failure, through evaluation and feedback from others, and through observation of others’ self-statements” in the face of similar stresul situations. Other cognitive researchers he paid more attention to the role of people’s expectations in the development of anxiety. Bandura distinguished two major types of ex源于：论文格式字体要求www.618jyw.com
pectancies in shaping emotional behior: one is self-efficacy (i.e., judgments of one’s capability to perform specific actions in specific situations succesully); and another is response-outcome expectancies (i.e., one’s expectations regarding the likely consequences of performing an action). According to Bandura’s self-efficacy theory, those who think they are capable of managing specific actions may not fear or oid; however, those who doubt their ability may feel anxious. Many other cognitive researchers he placed emphasis on the close association between the more general type of self-related cognitive expectancies and the experience of anxiety. Covington, Omelich, and Schwarzer indicated that diminished ability perceptions and diminis hed perceptions of self-worth are key factors in the experience of anxiety and in the detrimental effects of anxiety on performance. Epsteinbelieved that the self-esteem is an important source of anxiety. Carver and Scheier emphasized the importance of confidence in coping with anxiety. These researchers contended that confident people tend to put aside anxiety symptoms and to cope with anxiety, while doubtful people respond instead. That is to say, people respond to anxiety in particular depends on their level of confidence. Pekrun proposed an expectancy-value theory of anxiety by intergrating, systematizing and enlarging some of the assumptions of expectancy theories of anxiety. According to Pekrun’s theory, anxiety is fuction of multiplicative combinations of total expectancy and total valence. Beck et al. explained the development and maintenance of anxiety in terms of cognitive schemas and automatic thoughts typical of anxiety states. They maintain that when a threat is perceived, the relevant cognitive schemas are activated to evaluate and assign meaning to the event.Bibliography:
Ellis, R. (1994). Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
Kim, Joo-hae. (2000). Foreign language listening anxiety: A study of Korean students learning English. Unpublished ph. D dissertation Austin: University of Texas.
[3] Leary. (1983). Anxiety, Cognition, and Behior: In Search of a Broader Perspective. In Leary, M. R. Communication, Cognition, and Anxiety. Beverly Hills: Sage.
[4] MacIntyre, P. D. & Gardner, R.C.(1991a). Methods and Results in the Study of Anxiety and Language Learning: A Review of the Literature. Language Learning, 41, 85-117.
[5] McLaughlin, B. Rosan, T. McLeod, B.(1983). Second language learning : An information processing perspective. Language Learning, 33, 135-158.
[6] Mischel, W. & Peake, P. K. (1982). Beyond d é j à vu in the search for cross-situational consistency. Psychological Review, 89, 730-755.
[7]Scovel, T.(1991). The effect of affect on foreign language learning: A review of the anxiety research. In E.K Hor源于：免费论文查重www.618jyw.com
witz & D. J. Young (Eds), Language anxiety(pp.15-24). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
[8] Spielberger. C. D. (1976). The nature and measurement of anxiety. In C. D. Spielberger & R. dinz-Guerrero (Eds.) Cross- cultural anxiety: Vol. 1(pp. 3-12). Washington, DC: Hemisphere.
[9] Spielberger. C. D.(1983). Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-From Y). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.
[10] Steinberg, F. S. & Horwitz, E. K. (1986). The effect of induced anxiety on the denotative and interpretive content of second language speech. TESOL Quarterly, 20, 131-136.
[11]Tobias, S. (1986). Anxiety and cognitive processing of instruction. In R. Schwarzer (Ed.), Self-related cognition in anxiety and motivation (pp. 35-54). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
[12] Yuh-show Cheng.(1998). Examination of Two Anxiety Constructs: Second Language Class Anxiety and Second Language Writing Anxiety. Unpublished ph. D dissertation. Austin: University of Texas.
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