A retrospective view on foreign language anxiety
A retrospective view on foreign language anxiety

Summary/Abstract: This paper explores the EFL students’ experience of foreign language anxiety (FLA) as seen from a longer perspective including all stages of education up to the university level. It begins with a succinct description of the concept of FLA combined with an overview of related research. The theoretical considera- tions are followed by a study conducted on a group of 20 English Philology students who were asked to fill out a questionnaire and participate in semi- structured interviews aimed at examining the characteristics of their language anxiety as a process stretched over a long-term period of primary school, jun- ior high school, senior high school and university education. The data were collected thorough a mixed methods approach as the goal was to numerically measure the respondents’ levels of FLA at specific points in time as well as to investigate their personal judgments about the nature and quality of perceived language anxiety. Obtained findings led to the identification of a num- ber of factors responsible for FLA in each of those four phases of L2 learning.

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