Editor

JLLT edited by Thomas Tinnefeld
Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching
Volume 11 (2020) Issue 1, pp. 55-68




An Investigation of Foreign Language Anxiety among Sudanese EFL Students


Adil Ishag & Gamar Albooni (both Khartoum, Sudan)


Abstract
Foreign language anxiety has a debilitative and detrimental effect on the different stages of the language learning processes. The present study investigates the relationship between foreign language anxiety and students’ achievement in English, and examines gender differences and the most common sources of anxiety. 156 undergraduate EFL Sudanese students participated in the empirical investigation. A modified version of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale was used, in addition to students’ Grade Point Average (GPA) as an indicator of language achievement. The results showed that foreign language anxiety decreased as language achievement increased. Furthermore, the fear of negative evaluation is reported to be the most prevalent source of anxiety, followed by communication apprehension. A number of suggestions are proposed in order to minimise students’ anxiety in the foreign language.  
Keywords: Foreign language anxiety, communication apprehension, language achievement


1   Introduction

It has long been established that the process of language learning is not merely a simple acquisition of language skills and structures. According to Gardner et al. (1997) and Arnold & Brown (1999), many other non-linguistic factors such as foreign language anxiety, motivation, and attitudes substantially affect this process.  

Language anxiety is situation-specific and different from general anxiety and other forms of anxiety because it is specific to learning and communicating in a foreign language. Although language anxiety was an essential component in Gardner’s socio-educational model of language motivation, foreign language anxiety, as a distinct construct from general anxiety, was first conceptualized by Horwitz et al. (1986. Foreign language anxiety was defined as “a distinct complex of beliefs, perceptions, feelings, and behaviours related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process” (Horwitz et al.,1986: 128). Moreover, the authors identified three components of foreign language anxiety namely communication apprehension, fear of negative evaluation, and test anxiety. Brown (2007:  384) also defined language anxiety as “a feeling of worry experienced in relation to a foreign language, either trait or state in nature”.

Furthermore, MacIntyre & Gardner (1994: 283) defined foreign language anxiety as “the feeling of tension and apprehension specifically associated with second language contexts, including speaking, listening, and learning”. According to Scovel (1978), anxiety is associated with the formal process of language learning undertaken by adults, not the informal, unconscious language acquisition process that characterizes how children appear to learn a language. MacIntyre &Gardner (1989, 1991) proposed a model to illustrate the development of foreign language anxiety. According to them, foreign language anxiety develops due to the negative experiences of language learners during the language learning process. At the preliminary stage of the foreign language learning process, motivation and language aptitude are better predictors than language anxiety. However, after experiencing the language learning process for a while, the learner forms attitudes depending on both his positive and his negative experiences. If the learner’s experiences are predominantly negative, he develops language anxiety, and consequently feels nervous and performs poorly. As such, learning a foreign language is a unique learning experience and highlights the role of anxiety as a crucial psychological construct relevant to understanding the language learning process alongside other affective factors.

Scovel (1978: 139) distinguishes between facilitating anxiety and debilitating anxiety in foreign language learning. He argues that a certain amount of anxiety would stimulate effective language learning by motivating the individual to fight the new task, that is to engage in approach behaviour geared at mastering the task. However, an excessive amount of anxiety triggered, for example, by the perceived level of difficulty of the task, would hinder learning by inducing the learner to flee the new learning task.

Eysenck (1979: 365) further suggests that anxious individuals will compensate for the increased cognitive demands by an increased effort and that the extent to which anxiety either facilitates or impairs performance is determined by the extent to which high anxiety subjects compensate for reduced processing effectiveness by an enhanced effort. The question of whether anxiety would enhance or hinder performance depends on the level of additional efforts undertaken by the learner. If the task undertaken by the learner is relatively simple, anxiety would most likely have a positive effect due to additional effort, which in turn improves performance. However, if the task requires a high ability, anxiety would probably lead to decrease in performance. This phenomenon is described in the Yerkes-Dodson Law, which represents the relationship between anxiety and performance on a graph, with the intensity of anxiety arousal on the horizontal axis and performance on the vertical axis The interaction between these two factors results in an inverted U-shaped curve, with the highest point standing for the highest performance.

According to Tobias (1980), second language anxiety might occur at the three stages of input, processing and output. At the input stage, language anxiety acts like a filter by blocking and reducing the amount and quality of input information going to the learner’s cognitive processing system. Thus, from a debilitative anxiety perspective, language anxiety would slow down or reduce the quantity and quality of information from entering the processing stage. Language anxiety hinders the information which has reached the processing stage from being adequately processed, and therefore, even less progress is made by anxious learners at this stage. In turn, learners are assumed to produce output based on what they have learned and acquired beforehand. However, language anxiety also influences the quality of performance, resulting in poor productive skills, and, especially, poor communication.

Argaman & Abu-Rabia (2002) posited that facilitating anxiety, which is the proper and optimal level of anxiety arousal, can motivate students to work harder and have better performance. The facilitation of optimal anxiety can lead to high language achievement, whereas low anxiety produces no motivation for making efforts and high anxiety prevents students from performing well. This implies that too much anxiety has an inhibiting effect on the process of successful language learning, whereas a certain degree of anxiety would facilitate language learning and may be even necessary for high levels of achievement in the L2. In this context, Seller (2000) explains that facilitating anxiety influences the learner in a positive way and is best described as enthusiasm before a challenging task. In contrast, debilitating anxiety includes the unpleasant feelings, such as worry and dread, that interfere with the learning process.

Scovel (1978) attempted to examine the likelihood that both aspects of anxiety might be at work simultaneously whenever a person undertakes any activity. In his investigation, he found that a higher state of anxiety facilitates learning for highly intelligent individuals, but debilitates learning for less intelligent individuals. Furthermore, he pointed out that increased anxiety at the early stages of learning debilitates academic performance, while increased anxiety at later stages of learning is likely to improve academic performance. Similar to Scovel, Jaones (2004) states that both facilitating and debilitating anxiety are possible in the same learners, but it seems that debilitating anxiety is relatively more common.

Generally speaking, it could be concluded that despite the positive aspect of facilitating anxiety that increases learners’ effort, anxiety does not seem to be useful in the overall foreign language learning process. For instance, Horwitz & Young (1991) found that students with high levels of anxiety tended to overstudy despite the fact that their effort did not seem to yield success. Papi (2010) also doubts the facilitating effect of anxiety and he clearly challenges the notion that the facilitating effect of anxiety may increase learners’ motivation to learn.   


2   Background

2.1 The Impact of Language Anxiety on Oral Proficiency

As suggested by Onwuegbuzie et al. (1999), foreign language anxiety is one of the most important predictors of foreign language achievement. Achievement in the L2 might encompass students’ self-perceived language performance, final course grades and measurement of linguistic outcomes. In numerous studies, a negative relationship between anxiety and L2 achievement has been reported (e.g. Horwitz et al. 1986, Liu 2006, Saito & Samimy 1996, Woodrow 2006, Ellis 1996, and Aida 1994). For instance, Saito & Sammy (1996) examined the relationship between foreign language anxiety and language performance of American college students learning Japanese as a foreign language. The results indicated that anxiety had a negative impact on students’ performance for intermediate and advanced level students, but not for preliminary students. Nonetheless, there are some controversial issues regarding the cause-effect relationship between anxiety and achievement, that is to say, whether anxiety is regarded as a consequence and result rather than a cause of poor language performance. Therefore, MacIntyre (1995) posits that it is more relevant to suggest that an interrelationship exists between anxiety and achievement, rather than a one-way causality.   
The level of foreign language anxiety is evidently influenced and mediated by a number of individual differences and personality characteristics, and therefore, learners vary in the extent to which they might experience anxiety of communicating in a foreign language. Several researchers (e.g. Gregersen & MacIntyre 2014 and Dewaele 2012, 2013) have also demonstrated that personality attributes can substantially affect language learning success. A number of personality traits have been suggested to act as predictors of interpersonal differences in foreign language anxiety. For instance, Dewaele et al. (2008) found that higher levels of the trait ‘emotional intelligence’ are associated with reduced foreign language anxiety.

Moreover, gender has been indicated in studies by Keller (1983), Aacken (1999) and Dörnyei & Shoaib (2005) as an important factor in second language learning investigations, highlighting that female learners showed more interest, positive behavior and better performance in comparison to the male learners. In another study, Campbell & Shaw (1994) identified a significant interaction between gender and foreign language anxiety in which male students were more anxious to communicate in the target foreign language than their female counterparts. However, the role of gender in language anxiety reflects rather a controversial set of positive and negative findings. Onwuegbuzie et al. (2001) indicated a possible existence of female-oriented foreign language culture in which men might perceive the study of foreign language as a feminine subject and accordingly feel less comfortable in the language learning context. Kitano (2001) examined the role of gender in language anxiety among Japanese learners, finding that men experienced a higher degree of foreign language anxiety than women. Campell & Shaw (1994) also reported a significant correlation between gender and foreign language anxiety, indicating that male students were more anxious while using a foreign language inside the classroom than the female students. Conversely, other empirical studies suggested that women were more anxious in learning a foreign language than men. For example, Machida (2001) investigated foreign language anxiety among Japanese based on gender and other variables and found that female learners were more anxious than their male counterparts.  


2.2 Statement of the Present Study

Language anxiety is quite prevalent among foreign language learners. According to Worde (1998), one third to half of the students examined reported experiencing debilitating levels of language anxiety. This implies that communicating in a foreign language such as English is considered as an anxiety-provoking situation. Learners of English in Sudan are not an exception, although in Sudan, as an anglophone country, English is the official foreign language, which is a mandatory subject at schools from the fifth grade on. Yet, learning English as a foreign language has always been a problematic area for Sudanese students, due to limited contact with target-language speakers and a lack of exchange opportunities in the last decades, especially with English speaking countries. In this context, Sudanese students majoring in English are mostly exposed to English in formal classroom settings in which Arabic is the medium of instruction and the language of everyday communication. A deterioration in speaking and communication skills in English is considered to be a major problem among Sudanese students in different educational settings, in which English was replaced by Arabic as the language of instruction (Ahmed 2016, Siddiek 2011). Due to dominant attitudes, students majoring in English might not have many opportunities to practice or communicate in English outside the classroom, and they mostly adhere to speaking Sudanese Arabic among themselves. These situations will probably lead to anxiety where students are required to communicate in the foreign language and this will in turn affect the learning process and their willingness to communicate in the target language.


3   Research Questions and Methodology

The present study attempts to scientifically answer the following research questions:
1. Are there any statistically significant differences of Sudanese EFL undergraduate students’ foreign language anxiety with regards to their overall language achievement?  2. What is the most prevalent source of anxiety among Sudanese undergraduate EFL students?
The population of the current study is a total of 156 Sudanese undergraduate teacher-students studying at the English Language Department, Faculty of Education, of the University of Khartoum in Sudan and majoring in English, comprising freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, who represent different levels of foreign-language mastery (preliminary, intermediate, and advanced).

The sample seems is rather homogenous in terms of age and educational levels, however there are notable gender imbalances, as almost all academic levels were dominated by female students. Thus, the vast majority who participated in this survey were female students (83.33%), with the sample size of male students in all levels being considerably smaller 16.67%. 

The original Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) was initially constructed and proposed by Horwitz et al. (1986) to investigate American undergraduate students’ anxiety in learning Spanish as a foreign language. Since then, this scale has proven to be a rigorous tool for measuring foreign language anxiety and has been administered in a number of empirical studies in a wide range of contexts. The scale consists of 33 five-point Likert scaling statements which describe feelings and behaviours that are likely to be experienced by learners in the foreign-language classroom. The FLCAS measures three dimensions of foreign language anxiety, i.e. communication apprehension (CA), fear of negative evaluation (FNE) and test anxiety (TA). The FLCAS thus reflects a set of beliefs, perceptions, and feelings in response to L2 learning experience, and it also comprises other domains such as self-perceived proficiency, self-confidence, comparison, nervousness, and motivational intensity.

However, the FLCAS version used in the present study was adopted from Al-Saraj’s version of the scale (2011), which was slightly modified to reflect the context of learning English as a foreign language in Saudi Arabia -- which is quite similar to Sudan --, and which therefore suits  the purposes of the present study better. 

The scale used contains 33 items that refer to overall foreign language anxiety, with three sub-scales for measuring communication apprehension, fear of negative evaluation, and test anxiety. The participants have to indicate their level of anxiety, ranging from strongly agree = 5 points; agree = 4 points, undecided = 3 points; disagree = 2 points; and strongly disagree = 1 point.

The academic achievement of the participants were calculated according to the overall Grade Point Average (GPA) as follows:
  • 2.0 – 2.49 = Pass / Third Class
  • 2.50 – 2.99 = Good  / Second Class Division II
  • 3.0 – 3.49 Very Good / Second Class Division I
  • 3.50 – 4.0 = Excellent / First Class


4    Results and Discussion

4.1 Differences in Foreign Language Anxiety according to Language Achievement

In order to test whether there are any statistically significant differences of Sudanese EFL undergraduate students’ foreign language anxiety according to their overall language achievement, a one way between-subjects’ analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted:

Variable
Sum of Squares
df
Mean Square
F
Sig.
Anxiety
Between Groups
3492.37
3
1164.12
4.053
.008
Within Groups
43660.63
152
287.24


Total
47152.99
155




Table 1: ANOVA - GPA Differences and Anxiety

The results indicate that there are statistically significant differences in foreign language anxiety at the significant level p value < .05 with the conditions [F(3,152), p = .008]. This means that differences in language achievement as indicated by accumulative grade average lead to variations in the levels of foreign language anxiety. Since the results of the ANOVA test are statistically significant, the Tukey HSD post-hoc test was conducted to compare these conditions in order to identify the exact differences among the different categories of language achievement, indicating fair, good, very good and excellent language achievement, respectively.

With regards to the effect of language achievement on foreign language anxiety, the Tukey post hoc comparison as shown in Table 2 demonstrates that the mean score for students with excellent grades (M = 79.86, SD = 10.40) is significantly smaller than for those with pass grades (M = 101.89, SD = 16.58) and good grades (M = 100.12, SD = 17.02). This finding suggests that foreign language anxiety decreases as language achievement increases:

(I) GPA
(J) GPA
Mean
SD
Sig.
Pass
Good
101.89
16.58
.964
Very good


.266
Excellent


.010
Good
Pass
100.12
17.02
.964
Very good


.497
Excellent


.018
Very good
Pass
95.50
17.72
.266
Good


.497
Excellent


.102
Excellent
Pass
79.86
10.40
.010
Good


.018
Very good


.102

Table 2: Tuckey HSD Post Hoc Test: GPA Differences in Anxiety

These findings are consistent with the established literature and the long-held notion about the impact of language achievement on foreign language anxiety.

Foreign language anxiety is one of the most important predictors of foreign language achievement. As such, Sudanese students’ foreign language anxiety was negatively correlated with their levels of language achievement, which is in line with a number of studies such as those reported by Horwitz et al. 1986, Liu 2006, Saito & Samimy 1996, Woodrow 2006, Ellis 1996, and Aida 1994, which suggested a negative relationship between learners’ anxiety and L2 achievement.

Nevertheless, there are some controversial issues regarding the cause-effect relationship between anxiety and achievement. At times, anxiety is considered to be a result and consequence rather than a cause of poor performance. Therefore, MacIntyre (1995) points out that it is more relevant to suggest that an interrelationship exists between anxiety and achievement, rather than a one-way causality:

 Figure 1: Means Plots of Anxiety according to Language Achievement


4.2 Sources of Foreign Language Anxiety

Furthermore, the effect of the three main types of anxiety on willingness to communicate was examined. The Pearson correlation result as shown in Table 3 below reveals that these sources of anxiety are significantly negatively correlated with learners’ willingness to communicate, hinting at their fear of negative evaluation as the best predictor of unwillingness to communicate (r = -.290, p = .000), followed by communication apprehension (r = -.242, p = 0.002), and -- to a lesser extent --, test anxiety (r = -.168, p = 0.036). This indicates that unwillingness to communicate is influenced by the fear of negative evaluation rather than by communication apprehension or test anxiety.

Variable
CA
FNE
TA
 WTC
Pearson Correlation
-.242
-.290
-.168
Sig. (2-tailed)
.002
.000
.036
N
156
156
156

Table 3: Correlation between Students’ Willingness to Communicate, and Different Types of Anxiety
(Legend: WTC: willingness to communicate; CA: communication apprehension; FNE: fear of negative evaluation, TA: test anxiety)

A separate analysis of each academic year can be seen in Table 4:

Level
Variable
CA
FNE
TA
Second
WTC
Pearson Correlation
-.399**
-.531**
-.258
Sig. (2-tailed)
.010
.000
.103
N
41
41
41
Third
WTC
Pearson Correlation
-.565**
-.581**
-.543**

Sig. (2-tailed)
.000
.000
.000

N
43
43
43
Fourth
WTC
Pearson Correlation
.048
-.019
.192

Sig. (2-tailed)
.790
.914
.284

N
33
33
33
Fifth
WTC
Pearson Correlation
.108
-.033
.101

Sig. (2-tailed)
.512
.840
.540

N
39
39
39



Table 5: Correlation between Students’ Willingness to Communicate, and Different Types of Anxiety for each Class (Legend: WTC: willingness to communicate, CA: communication apprehension, FNE: fear of negative evaluation, TA: test anxiety)

This analysis reveals that there are significantly stronger negative relationships between these sources of anxiety and the willingness to communicate only among freshman and sophomore classes, and not among advanced junior and senior classes. Similarly, the fear of negative evaluation is the most important predictor of unwillingness to communicate both in the second year (r = -.531, p = .000), and third year (r = -.581, p = .000), followed by communication apprehension in the second (r = -.399, p = .010) and the third year (r = -.565, p = .000). However, only among intermediate students in the third academic level (r = -.543, p = .000) is test anxiety significantly negatively correlated with the learners’ willingness to communicate. These results further confirm that, among Sudanese undergraduate EFL students, the learners’ fear of negative evaluation is the most important predictor of their unwillingness to communicate, and that the effect of psychological factors, such as anxiety tends, to be more influential in the beginning and intermediate academic levels than in the higher levels.

Contrary to the widely held idea that communication apprehension is a potential indicator of willingness to communicate; the second part of the findings demonstrate that the fear of negative evaluation is indeed consistently the most important predictor of learners’ unwillingness to communicate, followed, to much lesser degree, by communication apprehension, and test anxiety. When the results are taken for each class separately, it can be stated that learners’ fear of negative evaluation and communication apprehension significantly predict their willingness to communicate, this, however, among preliminary and intermediate students only. In the light of Sudanese society, this result may be explainable as the reflection of a collectivist culture, in which individuals are more conscious and sensitive about the evaluation of others, and as such, those students tend to suppress their willingness to communicate to avoid being negatively evaluated and commented on by others. The contradictory result of students’ fear of negative evaluation as the most prevalent source of anxiety (instead of communication apprehension) in the Sudanese context, which has been reported in most of the previous studies, could be rationalized in terms of the overlapping crossovers between these sources of anxiety. There is no clear-cut distinction between communication apprehension and the fear of negative evaluation, since in oral communication, learners might experience apprehension and at the same time fear the evaluation of others. On the other hand, test anxiety is not so prevalent among Sudanese students, and as such, it is the least possible indicator of willingness to communicate. With regards to test anxiety, there is still a controversial debate on whether test anxiety in learning a foreign language can be clearly differentiated from test anxiety in learning other academic subjects, such as mathematics. It seems plausible that some students might experience high levels of anxiety when taking examinations regardless of the academic subject. Thus, regarding test anxiety as a component of language anxiety is questionable and therefore, MacIntyre and Gardner (1989) argue that it may be more appropriate to classify test anxiety as a general anxiety rather than language anxiety.   

In this respect, Horwitz et al. (1986) state that foreign language anxiety stems from three main sources of anxiety, i.e. communication apprehension, the fear of negative evaluation, and test anxiety. Language anxiety may not necessarily encompass equal levels of these three sources of anxiety. This is due to the consideration that communication apprehension and the fear of negative evaluation seem to be interrelated. For instance, when learners experience apprehension during group discussions, they may also feel anxious when being negatively evaluated by the group members. According to Horwitz et al. (1986), test anxiety only occurred when learners sat for exams, whereas the fear of negative evaluation could exist to a much wider variety of situations, such as in job interviews or when speaking a foreign language in class.  


5   Conclusion

Foreign language anxiety is one of the most crucial non-linguistic factors that have an impact on language achievement. Anxiety influences language learning in the different stages of the language acquisition process, namely input, processing and output. This study has investigated the relationship between students’ foreign language anxiety and their language achievement in English. The results have demonstrated that foreign language anxiety is negatively correlated with students’ overall language achievement, suggesting that anxiety decreases as students’ achievement in the target language increases. Additionally, the fear of negative evaluation was the most prevalent source of foreign language anxiety, followed by communication apprehension and test anxiety.

The findings indicate that anxiety has a debilitative and detrimental effect on the language learning process and as such, it negatively influences students’ communication and oral performance. Language achievement is highly correlated with the level of anxiety in the foreign language, implying that language anxiety decreases as one’ language achievement increases. However, this finding should be taken cautiously, since correlation does not indicate any causal relationship between the two variables. Moreover, it should be noted that it is not language achievement or students’ level of performance in the target language that influences their foreign language anxiety, but rather that this may be due to their self-perceived communication competence that would probably have more impact on their anxiety level than their actual language achievement per se. Therefore, teachers and instructors are advised to create encouraging and supporting learning environments in order to reduce students’ anxiety in the target language. Furthermore, teachers and instructors should not judge nor allocate communication opportunities to their students based on their actual performance or overall grades in the target language, but their self-perceived communication competence should be taken into consideration in order to promote students’ oral interaction, which, in turn, reduces their level of anxiety and communication apprehension in the target language.



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Authors:

Adil Ishag
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Languages
International University of Africa
Email: adil.ishag@gmail.com

Gamar Albooni
Associate Professor
Faculty of Arts
University of Khartoum
Email: gamaralbooni@gmail.com