Social Learning Theory in Language Learning: Exploring the Fear for Foreign Language Learning
No TL;DR found
Abstract
Learning a foreign language has become a norm to most of the worlds’ population as the world becomes globalised and the need to become bilingual/multilingual becomes a fundamental aspect for international communication. Despite the need to learn foreign languages, it has however triggered fear or anxiety in learners. For some, fear can be a driving force towards success in language learning yet, for most learners, it tremendously affects their learning process. This study is conducted to explore the fear of foreign language learning based on the Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1977) and framework of Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope (1986). A quantitative survey was distributed through Google Form, to 202 students from seven different foreign language courses (German, Mandarin, Japanese, Arabic, Korean, Italian and French) at a public university in Malaysia. Findings revealed that learners developed fear and nervousness when they were unable to understand what the educators were saying or any words spoken by the educators in the target language. Moreover, learners compared their low language ability with their peers which indicates low self-esteem. They also felt nervous when having to answer questions that they did not prepare in advance. Lastly, learners feel worried about the consequences of failing in their foreign language class. This study suggests that a strong support system involving language educators play an important role to ensure that fear in foreign language learning could be avoided or improved. and their self-perceived speaking ability. The study revealed correlation between anxiety and fear of negative evaluation and anxiety and perception of low ability in relation to peers and native speakers. Another related study was undertaken by Tsiplakides and Keramida (2009) involving fifteen students in the third grade of a lower secondary school in Greece. This qualitative study aimed at investigating foreign language learners’ anxiety with everyday classroom practice. The analysis of the findings showed that speaking anxiety is apparent among respondents and it was believed to be the result of learners’ fear of negative evaluation from their peers and their perception of their low ability in the language in comparison with their peers. Most of the respondents’ anxiety in speaking stem from their self-perceived inabil ity in performing in any speaking tasks and fear of their peers’ negative view of their language ability. The studies above show that anxiety in language learning is still apparent among foreign language learners and calculative measures need to be crafted to address this issue.