Н. Ю. Зуева (жауапты хатшы), О. Б. Алтынбекова, Г. Б. Мәдиева

19 
 
Вестник КазНУ. Серия филологическая. № 4
 (144). 2013 
 
 
 
 
 
 
УДК 81′23 
 
*Turgan Zhanadilov¹, Zaure Zhanadilova² 
 
¹Lecturer KIMEP University, Kazakhstan, Almaty 
²Senior Teacher, al-Farabi KazNU, Kazakhstan,  Almaty 
*е-mail: 
zhanadilov56@mail.ru
  
 
Anxiety. Does it make much difference in learning a second language? 
 
In this paper, drawbacks and useful sides of anxiety in learning a foreign language are tried to be exposed. The 
importance of the theme in the field of psychology and language teaching is that it may have a practical idea in the 
educational area for the teachers of English as a foreign language which is emphasized alongside the whole work. 
The authors are giving their understanding of anxiety from the works of scholars in the field of educational 
psychology and give some examples from their own experience. Some analyses of other researchers’ findings are 
given throughout the article by appropriate citations from their points of view in that field, particularly, anxiety as a 
phenomenon as well as anxiety in learning a foreign language. 
Key words: anxiety; psychology; language learning and teaching; hindrance; assistance.  
 
Т. Жанадилов, З. Жанадилова 
Беймазасыздық. Екінші тілді үйренуде ол көп әсер ете ме? 
 
Мақалада  шет  тілін  оқудағы  беймазасыздықтың  келтірер  жағымсыз  және  пайдалы  жақтары 
қарастырылған. Ағылшын тілін шет тілі ретінде үйрететін оқытушыларға іс-тәжірибелік ой және психология 
саласындағы  шетелдік  ғалымдардың  теориялық  ізденістері,  сонымен  қатар  осы  мақала  авторларының 
ағылшын тілін үйретудегі өз тәжірибелерінен мысалдар берілген, сондықтан бұл көтеріліп отырған тақырып 
маңызды болып табылады. Авторлар мақала оқушыларына білім беру саласындағы психологияны зерттеуші 
ғалымдардың еңбектері арқылы беймазасыздықты өздері қалай түсінетіндерін жеткізіп отыр. Осы аталмыш 
сала  ғалымдарының  ізденіс  нәтижелерін  сараптай  отырып,  олардан  ретін  келтіре  лайықты  дәйексөз  ала 
отырып, авторлар беймазасыздықты адам өміріндегі психологиялық құбылыс ретінде келтіріп, сонымен бірге 
оның тіл үйренудегі алатын орны туралы өз көзқарастарын келтірген.   
Түйін сөздер: беймазасыздық, психология, тіл үйрену, тіл үйрету, кедергі, жәрдем. 
   
Т. Жанадилов, З. Жанадилова 
Состояние тревожности. Большое ли влияние оно имеет в изучении второго языка? 
 
В  данной  статье  раскрываются  отрицательные  и  положительные  стороны  состояния  тревожности  в 
изучении иностранного языка. Важность темы заключается в том, что работа содержит практическую идею 
для преподавателей английского языка как иностранного и теоретические мысли зарубежных исследователей 
в  области  психологии,  а  также  примеры  из  опыта  авторов  в  обучении  английскому  языку.  Авторы 
предоставляют  читателям  свое  понимание  состояния  тревожности  через  труды  специалистов  в  области 
психологии  в  образовании.  Анализируя  и  соответствующим  образом    цитируя  результаты  исследований 
ученых  в  этой  области,  авторы  приводят  свою  точку  зрения  о    самом  состоянии  тревожности  в  целом  как 
психологическое явление в жизни человека, так же, как и состояние тревожности в изучении иностранного 
языка.         
Ключевые слова: состояние тревоги; психология; изучение языка; обучение языку; препятствие; содей-
ствие. 
___________________________________
 
 
“There is a certainty of uncertainty that, in 
part, defines us”.  
Susan L. Smalley, Ph.D 
Introduction 
It is argued that learning a foreign language 
has always been one of the difficult tasks for a 
human being. It is learned in different ages, 
different situations and different conditions under 
some circumstances compelling someone to be  
integrated into a new society, to be able to have a 
job or to accomplish a school programme where a 
foreign language is a compulsory subject. From  
common teaching experience, it is known that 
people learn a foreign language in the case of this 
article English with varied success. Success may 
depend on the age as Krashen points out that 
‘children are generally superior in second-
language attainment in the long run, adults, at  
least initially, acquire at a faster rate’ [1, 12] when 
one begins their first steps in the learning of a 
Anxiety. Does it make much difference in learning a second language? 

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ISSN 1563-0223                        Bulletin KazNU. Filology series. № 4
 (144). 2013
language. It depends on the requirements of the 
life such as how soon, where and what level of the 
foreign language is demanded. It may also depend 
on the so-called endowment or as Dornyei and  
Skehan pertinently question if ‘a foreign language 
aptitude is a specific talent for learning foreign 
languages which exhibits considerable variation 
among learners’ [2, 590]. So, whatever the 
variables are, alongside with them there seem to 
be also many difficulties in acquiring a foreign 
language.  
One of the constraints which learners encounter 
is anxiety. Arguably, this difficulty may not be 
only linked with a language learner’s age or one 
of the individual differences such as a talent. It 
may appear as a changeable state of the mood in a 
particular part of a person’s language learning 
period. Also, anxiety may show its occurrence not 
only in the language learning experience of a 
person but in any period of a person’s life such as 
during a job interview, on the first day of driving 
a car, or making a speech or a presentation in 
front of a large audience. Or, if you take an 
example from the practice of educators, the first 
day in the language classroom with twenty or 
twenty five teenager English learners each 
equipped with state-of-the-art technology is really 
worrying for a novice teacher.  Anxiety is 
commonly described by psychologists as a state of 
apprehension, a vague fear that is only indirectly 
associated with an object. Because anxiety is 
clearly an emotional state, it is generated through 
the arousal of the limbic system, the primitive, 
subcortical “chasis”of the cerebrum, which plays 
an important, though indirect, role in many kinds 
of human enterprises, including communication, 
Hilgard, Atkinson, and Atkinson [3], Lamendella 
[4], cited in Scovel [5, 134]. 
In this paper, the authors try to expose some 
drawbacks and possible useful sides of the anxiety 
in learning a second language. They will also 
attempt to show their understanding of anxiety 
from the works in this field and give some 
examples from their own experience for teaching 
implication of this phenomenon giving some 
analysis of the researchers’ findings.  
The research bases on the secondary data 
analysis, and as such deals with the definition of 
anxiety as a psychological phenomenon and its 
different types. Particularly, emphasis is put on 
searching for language anxiety, especially in the 
process of learning a foreign language, and 
whether it may exert a negative or positive 
influence on foreign language learners.     
 
 
Anxiety as a hindrance 
According to Seligman et al [6], anxiety is a 
psychological and physiological state characterized 
by cognitive, somatic, emotional and behavioral 
components. These components of anxiety may 
create a combination of unpleasant feelings such 
as uneasiness, apprehension, fear, or worry. 
Anxiety seems to be a condition of a person’s 
general mood. It can often occur without an 
identifiable triggering stimulus. However, Ohman 
[7] distinguishes anxiety from fear by saying that 
fear occurs in the presence of an observed threat. 
Additionally, fear is related to the specific 
behaviors of escape and avoidance, whereas 
anxiety is the result of threats that are perceived to 
be uncontrollable or unavoidable. The latter view 
from Ohman [7] is worth for us to agree. For 
example, if a teacher trying to mobilize the 
students to the forthcoming exams exaggerates the 
requirements for the exam procedure, the students 
may take the severe instruction as a threat of non-
pass possibility. As a result there might appear the 
anxiety in the learners’ minds which in its turn 
may disrupt the knowledge obtained during a term 
or a year and lead to a low performance at the 
exam in one of the language skills either, to make 
things worse, in all four skills. That is what we 
would call a fault of us, teachers at the beginning 
of our teaching career just after three or four-year 
initial training as a teacher at a pedagogic 
institution. Reflecting back to our experience, we 
understand that this mistake might come from the 
teachers’ wrong beliefs that a teacher is the only 
authority in the classroom which may also sound 
as ‘the severer – the better’.      
As Gardner and MacIntyre [8] define, language 
anxiety can be in the form of the apprehension 
experienced when a situation requires the use of a 
second language with which the individual is not 
fully proficient. Therefore, they argue that it is 
seen as a stable personality trait referring to the 
propensity for an individual to react in a nervous 
manner when speaking, listening, reading, or 
writing in the second language. It could be 
arguably said that being prone to nervousness a 
student has never been in such a situation or has 
purposefully been avoiding similar situations 
because of the original shy feature of the 
character. Some of our students would justify 
their low performance in listening by a sort of 
being unmusical which might be a very rare case 
to see and which we assume may not have much 
ground to prove.  
Researchers in the field of language acquisition  
 
 
Turgan Zhanadilov, Zaure Zhanadilova 

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Вестник КазНУ. Серия филологическая. № 4
 (144). 2013 
 
 
psychology such as Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope 
[9] discriminate anxiety as a complex experience 
of a person, who may have several categories, 
first, in communication in the second (foreign) 
language and, second, with social evaluation which 
is expressed in the language use with limited 
knowledge attainment. In the communication 
(reading, writing, listening and speaking) in target 
language in a class, students experiencing an 
anxiety-producing condition may differ towards a 
negative side of language perception from their 
classmates who are in more relaxed conditions. 
What is known from our teaching experience, 
students who are more anxious try not to speak 
much, instead, they give shorter answers avoiding 
the teacher’s and the peers’ attention. The same 
behavior could be noticed in the way how they 
produce writing tasks in the classroom, which is 
Daly and Miller’s [10] finding as on time 
corroboration to the life experience of a teacher. 
They have found that students with higher levels 
of writing anxiety write shorter compositions and 
qualify their writing less than their calmer 
counterparts do.  
As for the second category, the social evaluation, 
it may be closely connected with the interaction of 
a student with his peers and the teacher which is 
also supposed to involve the appraisal for the 
student from aside that may not be a participant of 
classroom activities. The evaluator may appear as 
anyone in the society, either an employer conducting 
a short-listing among the job applicants, or an 
interlocutor taking the speaking part in the process 
of TOEFL/UCLES examinations. As such, the 
social evaluation anxiety may have in itself the 
fear of negative evaluation during testing, com-
munication. Therefore, it seems to be broader than 
just conversation or language use anxiety but it is 
the fear of evaluation from aside in the society.  
The third category of anxiety Horwitz et al [9] 
differentiate is test anxiety. In their opinion, 
students who encounter this component of anxiety 
deal with fear of failure that is their poor perfor-
mance during the exams be it an oral or written 
test. According to our teaching experience, the 
student who is usually brilliant in doing everyday 
classroom activities may literally get “stuck” 
under the influence of anxiety in doing the 
exercises which they know for sure, i.e. the 
student may be thinking about the result of the 
exam in general instead of thinking over how to  
resolve the specific task he is doing. This type of 
anxiety should be familiar to all experienced 
teachers. Test anxiety in this case plays a negative 
role against the student’s overall knowledge 
performance.  
Another detrimental type of anxiety is 
‘overstudying’ which as Horwitz et al define that 
‘students who are overly concerned about their 
performance may become so anxious when they 
make errors, they attempt to compensate by 
studying even more’ [9, 127]. It is understandable 
that the student may be concentrating on how he 
is going to perform at the exam instead of 
thinking of what must be performed. It may also 
be explained by the student’s incorrect choice of 
learning strategy due to lack of the young age. It 
could also be said that he has not received enough 
help from his parents and the teacher in reducing 
the anxiety. It would be relevant to give an 
example from the experience when one of the 
article authors was chosen by the Kazakhstani 
Ministry of Education as one of four invigilators 
for the Unified National Testing for secondary 
school graduates in 2005 in the region of Kara-
gandy (Kazakhstan). The importance of this 
testing for the graduates is so high that it 
determines the final graduate school grades and at 
the same  time defines whether a graduate wins a 
right to participate in the contest to enter a higher 
education institution. One school-girl had had 
excellent marks in all subjects including English 
as a foreign language and had been expected to 
finish the secondary school with honours. She was 
dreaming of entering one of the prestigious 
universities with special invitation. She was so 
obsessed with that idea and was so afraid of her 
village men’s public opinion that she had been 
studying whole night till late morning having only 
a two-hour rest before the testing. As a result, her 
exhausted organism did not help her to achieve 
the goal. She only got good marks.   
   
Anxiety as an assistance 
“Language anxiety refers to students’ anxiety 
reactions to situations in which they might make 
use of the target language. Depending on the 
language-learning context, it could be possible to 
identify many possible situations: language clas-
sroom anxiety and language use anxiety” [8, 8].   
The former refers to anxiety aroused speci-
fically in the classroom, while the latter refers to 
feelings of anxiety that individuals experience in 
any context where they are called upon to speak 
the target language. For example, in a Kazakhstani  
classroom, again going back to our experience, 
students are reluctant to show their ability in 
speaking believing that, first, they will not say  
 
Anxiety. Does it make much difference in learning a second language? 

22 
 
 
 
ISSN 1563-0223                        Bulletin KazNU. Filology series. № 4
 (144). 2013
anything until they learn much of the language, 
secondly, they feel embarrassed to be judged by 
the group mates. This behavior of individuals is 
more specific to the English language learners of 
the beginning and low intermediate levels 
especially among the students of older age. The 
speaking and listening anxiety can be strongly felt 
in a mixed-ages group of general English learners 
where an elderly student has to show his ability in 
front of the students who are much younger than 
him. However, there is a way out from such an 
embarrassing situation for that adult student. 
Assuming that at an articulatory level, the vocal 
cords and the muscles participating in the 
production of a speech have had a certain shape 
and forms of one’s first language sounds, they can 
be reshaped and reformed as any other athletic 
skills which will be ready to fulfill special 
neuromuscular tasks of speaking in a foreign 
language as it was suggested in 1973 by Scovel 
[5] in his “Language learning as a sport”. As we 
see, Scovel [5] talks about how to remove anxiety, 
or, rather, paraphrasing him we would say how to 
use the anxiety in a positive direction. 
As far as the usefulness of anxiety is concer-
ned, it should be noted that there were moments 
when anxiety was noticed to have helped students 
at the definite parts of testing process. For 
example, Chastain [11] while testing two different 
language groups of students found out two 
different results, negative and positive impact of 
anxiety. One group had been taught with audio-
lingual method, the other one had been taught 
with traditional method. Chastain was looking for 
the correlation between student scores on tests and 
anxiety. The audio-lingual method group showed 
a negative correlation with anxiety but the tradi-
tional method group got a positive correlation. He 
assumes that a little anxiety might be helpful 
during a test, but if it is too much, it may lead to a 
low performance. Facilitating anxiety was also 
found in Kleinmann’s [12] research where he 
wanted to find the relationship between the 
avoidance behaviour of students and anxiety. The 
assumption was that the helping anxiety would 
inspire the students during the test to use the 
certain
 
English language structure which they 
would not use in their native language because of 
its complexity in the usage. Klienmann’s [12] 
hypothesis came proved true as the Arabic and 
Spanish students equipped with some anxiety had  
used the particular structures in the English lan-
guage which they were not supposed to use due to 
their difficulty in their mother tongue.   
 
Another view which takes the positive influence 
of anxiety, apart from the above mentioned situa-
tions from general psychology, in the applied 
psychology is that anxiety is "a future-oriented 
mood state in which one is ready or prepared to 
attempt to cope with upcoming negative events" 
[13, 1249] suggesting that it is a distinction 
between future dangers in relation to present time 
that separates anxiety from fear. Here, anxiety is 
considered to be a normal reaction to stress. It 
may help a person to deal with a difficult 
situation, for example at work or at school, by 
prompting one to cope with it. It could be also 
assumed that anxiety may help one in the 
situations when a high concentration is needed 
provided that a person’s or a whole group of 
people’s life or something very important depends 
on his or her action being taken at that moment. It 
may be argued that in this case, anxiety can 
border with a high responsibility and be confused 
to be clearly differentiated. Therefore, this posi-
tive occurrence of anxiety could be considered to 
be useful affecting the owner of the action on an 
emotional level.  
    
Teaching implications 
As an implication of anxiety in the classroom 
it could be proposed that anxiety may be two – 
folded: helpful and harmful. It can lead to a 
success if it is in small portions, but if it 
overflows, it may be disruptive or even take a 
form of an illness. In order to be able to inspire 
students towards successful learning of a foreign 
language teachers may take guidance from 
Schwartz’s [14, 73] classification of motivational 
factors of learning and Chastain’s [11, 105] sug-
gestion in which he differentiates two influential 
learner variables: intrinsic and extrinsic. Among 
intrinsic motivational variables, he includes the 
motivators such as anxiety, need to achieve, self – 
concepts and aspirations. And, socio – cultural 
influences and social reinforcers are referred to 
the extrinsic motivational factors in learning a 
language. 
 Another important part of the educational 
process is evaluation of the student’s foreign 
language skills. Sometimes we, teachers overlook 
the psychological side of the life of students at 
school. While evaluating their students’ English 
language level, teachers should be careful in 
differentiating the lack of knowledge of a student  
from the anxiety which the same student is 
experiencing. Simplifying the situation, teachers 
should be able to observe, notice and if possible to  
 
 
Turgan Zhanadilov, Zaure Zhanadilova 

23 
 
Вестник КазНУ. Серия филологическая. № 4
 (144). 2013 
 
 
reveal anxiety and differentiate it from such 
human beings’ weaknesses like laziness or under-
studying.  

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