The Effects of Anxiety and Listening Support on Listening Comprehension in a Foreign Language Classroom

Abstract

Students learning English in a foreign language environment have limited exposure to the language outside the study context. This means that their ability to comprehend spoken English is quite limited and thus taking a listening comprehension test can be a stressful experience for them. Although anxiety related to other language skills has been studied as an affective variable in foreign language learning, listening anxiety has received little attention from researchers and teachers to this point. This study was based on the assumption that anxiety can have a negative effect on learners' performance in a listening test and that some form of support for their listening might help to reduce their anxiety. Four types of listening support were investigated by means of an experimental design. Two of them involved pre-listening activities: the learners had the opportunity either to study the test topics or to learn key vocabulary items in advance. The other two forms of support were incorporated into the test administration: being able to preview the test questions or to hear the listening passages three times. The research was conducted with 160 students who were majoring in business at a college in Taiwan. Apart from taking the listening test, the participants completed questionnaires on their language learning background, their general level of anxiety about listening, their specific anxiety before and after the test and their listening strategy use. In addition, some of the students were interviewed after the test. The results showed that overall the participants who studied the test topics beforehand performed best on the test, followed by those who heard the passages three times. An analysis according to level of listening proficiency showed that more proficient learners tended to score comparably regardless of their treatment, whereas low-level learners were more affected by the type of listening support they received. Before the test students in all four treatment groups reported high levels of anxiety but afterwards there were significant differences according to type of listening support and level of listening proficiency. In general, those who performed well on the test had less posttest anxiety than the students who had low scores. The research also showed that different forms of listening support influenced the test-takers' use of listening strategies to varying degrees. Previewing the questions had a greater impact on strategy use than the other types of support. Thus, the study showed that some forms of listening support could be effective in reducing anxiety, particularly for lower particularly students, and this has implications for the design of suitable tests of listening comprehension in foreign language classrooms.