Exploring the Factors Responsible for Learners’ Anxietyin Speaking English as a Foreign Language

It has been observed that despite learners’ seven year (Class VI to XII)consecutive input in English as a compulsory subject at school andcollege levels in the target context, in addition to their privately-madeefforts; they still fail to obtain the desired level of oral proficiency inEnglish as a foreign language. (National Education Policy Reports2009 to 2013: 27, Higher Education Commission of Pakistan Reports2009 to 2013: 50 164, Gillani, 2004: 5). This is, probably, due toEFL teachers’ lack of attention to the learners’ affective needs duringteaching-learning practice. Affect in foreign language learningincludes: emotions, feelings, beliefs, personality traits, motivation,learning styles, socio-cultural and psycholinguistic factors. Theseaffective variables may affect the learners’ ability to learn a foreignlanguage. Foreign language anxiety is also one such affective variable(Horwitz, 1986: 125-132). Language anxiety is one of the majorfactors in learning a foreign language in any context or setting (Hurd,2007: 488). It is one of the highly examined variables in allpsychology and education (Horwitz, 2003: 13). Though, there hasbeen a considerable research in the cognitive domain in learningEnglish as a foreign language, but the aspect of emotion and the wayto deal with emotion to maximize positive results in a languageclassroom has not been explored in Pakistan. The proposed paperthus, aims at exploring the factors responsible for learners’ anxiety inspeaking English as a foreign language in the target context.