Anxiety and oral performance in a foreign language test situation

Abstract

Abstract This research investigates a situation specific anxiety: oral examination anxiety in a foreign language learning situation. It examines how a particular type of language anxiety - anxiety in oral communication - impacts on the learner’s oral performance. The subjects are first year Japanese language students at tertiary level in Australia. Questionnaire surveys were conducted to measure the students’: a) anxiety in foreign language classes, b) their anxiety toward oral examinations, and c) the anxiety they actually felt in an oral examination. The objectives of the study were to investigate relations between anxiety and scores in oral examinations. The results indicated that state anxiety can be a strong predictor of learners’ performance in an examination. However, the subjects’ trait anxiety had also both direct and indirect influence over their oral performance. A cause-effect relation among trait anxiety, oral performance, and state anxiety (MacIntyre and Gardner 1989) was also observed in this study.