Gregerson, T., and Horwitz, E.K. (2002). Language learning and perfectionism: anxious and non-anxious language learners’ reactions to their own oral performance. Modern Language Journal, 86, 562-571.
Gregersen, Tammy and Horwitz, Elaine K., “Language Learning and Perfectionism: Anxious and Non-Anxious Language Learner’s Reactions to Their Own Oral Performance.” The Modern Language Journal, 86, iv, 2002:562-570
Learning a foreign language can be an exciting and challenging journey in life, but it can also be a very daunting and scary journey for those with foreign language anxiety. In this article, the two authors define and describe language anxiety as being closely related to three anxieties that happen in everyday life: communication apprehension, fear of negative evaluation, and test anxiety (562).
When learning a foreign language, students who share the anxiety of communication apprehension worry about whether or not they are able to express themselves completely, and if not, they are tentative about even trying to communicate at all. Fear of negative evaluation in foreign language learners causes the students to clam up when doing speaking activities, so as to not mess up whatever they are attempting to say. They seem to be over-concerned with what others think of their ability to perform in the foreign language, which then causes them to not initiate conversation or take part in anything that has to do with speaking in front of people. The constant nagging thought that they are being evaluated tends to take hold of how they perform in the classroom, which proves to be detrimental to the student’s overall participation (563). Students also share the characteristics of test anxiety in the fact that they view the production of the language to be more of a testing situation.
According to the authors, the students that share these certain anxieties when learning a foreign language lean towards perfectionism. Perfectionists set standards that are extremely high and at times unlikely to be attained, which in turn causes frustration and discouragement in learning.
“With respect to language learning, perfectionist students would not be satisfied with merely communicating in their target language-they would want to speak flawlessly, with no grammatical or pronunciation errors, and as easily as a native speaker.” (563)
As a result of this, the students won’t try to speak audibly until they have thought about how they will sound, if the grammar is formed correctly, and if it expresses exactly what they wanted to say. Only if those criteria are met will they actually attempt at speaking out loud.
In order to better understand the relationship between anxious language learners and perfectionism, a test was conducted by videotaping eight students during an oral interview to evaluate their performance in the interview itself as well as their personal reactions to watching themselves on tape. Of the eight students interviewed, four of the students were high-anxious learners and four were low-anxious learners. The oral interviews were conducted one-on-one with the students and consisted of a number of questions about their family, where they were from, and what they do on vacation. They were then able to watch the video of their interview, as they were also being evaluated on their reactions to their performance.
The high-anxious students were very critical of their performance, and said in a number of ways that they could have done better if they would have studied more, and that they had committed too many errors. The low-anxious students however, were mostly positive about their ability, and claimed that the interview wasn’t stressful. The students still recognized their errors but did not dwell on them.
From these interviews, the authors came to the conclusion that language anxiety does have a strong correlation to perfectionism, in that many of the same qualities were evident in the students that were interviewed. The level of their ability in the language however, didn’t have much to do with whether or not the students were anxious. The authors did in fact state that all of the language learners were at the same course level. The difference between the high-anxiety and low-anxiety learners was in the way that they responded to the realization of their limitations.
As a foreign language student and an aspiring Spanish and ESL teacher, this article was very interesting to me. I think that it is important to know about high-anxiety students and what the characteristics of them are, because more likely than not I will have them in my classroom some day, and I will need to know how to relate to and encourage them. I myself do not think that I am a high-anxiety language learner. I like to try things even though they might not be correct, and give myself enough grace and patience that I can handle mistakes.
My future students on the other hand, might be high-anxiety learners and as a result may struggle to stay ahead. As a teacher I need to emphasize the fact that making mistakes is a normal part of the learning process and that learning and improving in the material is ultimately more important than perfectly executing the language every time one speaks. I want to be an encouragement to my students by teaching them that learning is a journey that doesn’t happen without many bumps in the road. I am not going to make them strive for perfection, but rather strive for improvement in what they know.
Also, I need to remember that perfectionist students may need just as much help as the most non-motivated student in class even if they are getting their work done. Each student struggles in a different way-it is up to me as a teacher to find that struggle and then to help the student overcome it.