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【Abstract】 Anxiety, as an affective variable, has been thought to be one of the most important factors influencing the success and failure in Second Language Acquisition(SLA). It is proved that language anxiety is caused not only by the environment but also by the learner himself. In this paper, causes of language anxiety are put forward and some suggested solutions are proposed.
【Key words】 Second Language Acquisition(SLA) language anxiety causes solutions
1. Introduction
It’s a common sense that language anxiety, as an affective factor, is an important factor that influences Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Especially these years, a number of language researchers and educationalists have found that language anxiety greatly affects the process of acquisition of language in the learner’s study, so language anxiety has been attached more attention in the SLA. Language anxiety is not only caused by the learning environment, but also caused by the learner himself. However, more studies stress on the macro analysis of all the factors that cause language anxiety, fewer researches lay on the specific causes from learners. So this paper wants to improve the learner’s process of language acquisition through finding out the causes of language anxiety and puts forwards some solutions to avoiding heavy language anxiety from learner’s aspects.
2. Theory background
Since 1970s, foreign researchers have done a lot of researches on language anxiety. Krashen is one of the first such researchers and made great contribution to this field. One of his SLA hypothesis , Affective Filter Hypothesis (Krashan 1982)，mentioned that various “affective” factors like motivation, anxiety, can “block” comprehensible input and keep it from effectively producing acquisition. They are called the affective filter. When the affective filter is high, learners maybe understand the input, but the input can’t reach the Language Acquisition Device(LAD). High anxiety can bring such high affective filter, and relates to poor second language acquisition success.
Later, Stern(1983), in his book Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching, said that the outcome of learning is positively correlated with the attitude of learners to the study of language. The extraverted learners can get success more easily than introverted ones.
Then some researchers classified the anxiety.
Scovel, with other experts, divided anxiety into two forms. One is facilitating anxiety, the other is debilitating anxiety. The former can encourage learners to make more effort to complete studying task, and the latter may lead them to avoid learning which bringS them anxiety.
In 1994, Ellis further illustrated that the discrepancies of learners’ physiology, affection, cognition and learning strategies have great influence on SLA. He divided anxiety into three types, that is, trait anxiety, state anxiety and situation-specific anxiety. Trait anxiety is a kind of permanent trend that anxiety will be generated once intension comes, belonging to one’s character; state anxiety is the combined product of trait anxiety and situation anxiety, pointing to one moment’s state of tension; situation-specific anxiety refers to the anxious mood in specific situation. Language anxiety is usually seen as a kind of situation-specific anxiety.
【Key words】 Second Language Acquisition(SLA) language anxiety causes solutions
1. Introduction
It’s a common sense that language anxiety, as an affective factor, is an important factor that influences Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Especially these years, a number of language researchers and educationalists have found that language anxiety greatly affects the process of acquisition of language in the learner’s study, so language anxiety has been attached more attention in the SLA. Language anxiety is not only caused by the learning environment, but also caused by the learner himself. However, more studies stress on the macro analysis of all the factors that cause language anxiety, fewer researches lay on the specific causes from learners. So this paper wants to improve the learner’s process of language acquisition through finding out the causes of language anxiety and puts forwards some solutions to avoiding heavy language anxiety from learner’s aspects.
2. Theory background
Since 1970s, foreign researchers have done a lot of researches on language anxiety. Krashen is one of the first such researchers and made great contribution to this field. One of his SLA hypothesis , Affective Filter Hypothesis (Krashan 1982)，mentioned that various “affective” factors like motivation, anxiety, can “block” comprehensible input and keep it from effectively producing acquisition. They are called the affective filter. When the affective filter is high, learners maybe understand the input, but the input can’t reach the Language Acquisition Device(LAD). High anxiety can bring such high affective filter, and relates to poor second language acquisition success.
Later, Stern(1983), in his book Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching, said that the outcome of learning is positively correlated with the attitude of learners to the study of language. The extraverted learners can get success more easily than introverted ones.
Then some researchers classified the anxiety.
Scovel, with other experts, divided anxiety into two forms. One is facilitating anxiety, the other is debilitating anxiety. The former can encourage learners to make more effort to complete studying task, and the latter may lead them to avoid learning which bringS them anxiety.
In 1994, Ellis further illustrated that the discrepancies of learners’ physiology, affection, cognition and learning strategies have great influence on SLA. He divided anxiety into three types, that is, trait anxiety, state anxiety and situation-specific anxiety. Trait anxiety is a kind of permanent trend that anxiety will be generated once intension comes, belonging to one’s character; state anxiety is the combined product of trait anxiety and situation anxiety, pointing to one moment’s state of tension; situation-specific anxiety refers to the anxious mood in specific situation. Language anxiety is usually seen as a kind of situation-specific anxiety.