Anxiety

Abstract

Language anxiety is a prominent topic in the second language acquisition (SLA) literature, likely because it is both an intense, unwelcome emotion and a common experience. There is a long list of potentially negative consequences of anxiety arousal including, but not limited to, making language learning more difficult and time consuming, introducing distracting thoughts, unpleasant physical arousal (e.g., a racing heart), an urge to avoid or leave communication situations, and a reluctance to engage with new people or to try new things (MacIntyre, 2017). This chapter provides a systematic review of the research on second language anxiety. After a brief overview of approaches to the topic, this chapter reviews the literature on language anxiety by examining emotion theory and how it can be applied to language anxiety. Next, supporting research results are presented along with an extended discussion of how those data have been collected. The chapter ends with a suggestion for three possible future research directions.