Seeing Through Listening Comprehension Exam Anxiety

* Several studies have been carried out in different contexts to show experimentally what language teachers know intuitively: that students in a foreign language classroom are often anxious and that this feeling inhibits their performance in the foreign language (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986; MacIntyre & Gardner, 1991a, 1991b; Phillips, 1992; Young, 1990, 1992, 1999). One of the conclusions of these studies is that anxiety among foreign language students is not just a case of general classroom anxiety being "transferred to the foreign language learning but a distinct complex of things related to the foreign language classroom learning" (Horwitz et al., 1986, p. 128). What makes language classes so special in this negative sense? Unlike classes in other subjects, foreign language classes that emphasize communicative skills require active participation and a high degree of risk taking and self-exposure. Adolescent or adult learners of a foreign language find themselves in the uncomfortable position of trying to express mature ideas in front of their peers in an obviously still immature linguistic vehicle. Their self-esteem is reduced in this process, and this onstruction of Ambiguous Sentenc s each item, the italicized part of the firs s ntence replaces the italicized part of the s cond timulus) sentenc . There we three Type 1, four Type 2, and thr e Type 3 ambiguous entences. (For a complete lis of sentences, see Harley, How d, & Hart, 1995.)

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