Foreign language anxiety

Foreign language anxiety, also known as xenoglossophobia, is the feeling of unease, worry, nervousness and apprehension experienced in learning or using a second or foreign language. The feelings may stem from any second language context whether it is associated with the productive skills of speaking and writing or the receptive skills of reading and listening.

Research has shown that foreign language anxiety is a significant problem in language classrooms throughout the world especially in terms of its strong relationship to the skill of speaking in a foreign or second language. It is a form of what psychologists describe as a specific anxiety reaction. Some individuals are more predisposed to anxiety than others and may feel anxious in a wide variety of situations. Foreign language anxiety, however, is situation-specific and so it can also affect individuals who are not characteristically anxious in other situations. Its main causes are communication-apprehension, test anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation. There is also a psychological component to foreign language anxiety. Additionally, it has a variety of detrimental effects on foreign language performance, but both the student and the teacher can adopt strategies to minimize the anxiety.

The concept of language anxiety (or stress) has also received a particularly recent social and academic coverage in Catalan language. In this context, it defines the collective, mental restlessness and uncertainty towards the diglossia suffered by their speakers, about the speedy minorization of the language in most of its daily and media usages and, eventually, regarding its future extinction from a glottophagy by the Spanish, French and Italian languages. The unrest and worry come due to the fact that the native (Catalan) speakers foresee a connection of threats and verbal agressions that may experience only because of using their language in bigger or touristic cities such as Barcelona, València, Eivissa or Perpinyà. In contrast to what foreigners may feel abroad with a different language, here the renounces made by the indigenous speakers due to a lack of demolinguistic protection has been proposed as the contrary of a language welfare.