Understanding the experiences of anxious language learners: Why

communication apprehension + test anxiety + fear of negative evaluation 6=

language anxiety
Elaine Horwitz
University of Texas at Austin, USA
Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope (1986, p. 125) began with four quotations relating the experiences of
anxious language learners:
”I know I have some sort of disability: I can’t learn a foreign language no matter how hard I try.”
”When I’m in my Spanish class, I just freeze. I can’t think of a thing when the teacher calls on me.
My mind goes blank.”
”I feel like my French teacher is some kind of Martian death ray: I never know when he’ll point at
me.”
”It’s about time someone studied why some people can’t learn languages.”
In that article we argued that a specific anxiety called Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety was
primarily responsible for the debilitating effects of anxiety on second language learning and achieve-
ment. We also described three representative specific anxieties, Communication Apprehension, Test
Anxiety, and Fear of Negative Evaluation, that we saw as conceptually related to foreign language
anxiety to help readers understand the concept of a specific anxiety. Contrary to a number of sub-
sequent interpretations, Horwitz et al. did not argue that Communication Apprehension plus Test
Anxiety plus Fear of Negative Evaluation formed an equation that resulted in Foreign Language
Classroom Anxiety. Rather, we argued that foreign language anxiety is different from those three
constructs, a contention that was supported by the validation study reported in Horwitz (1986). This
paper will review the literature on the distinguishability of Language Anxiety from Communication
Apprehension, Test Anxiety, and Fear of Negative Evaluation and return to the original contention
of Horwitz et al. that the anxiety associated with language learning stems from the threats to self-
concept, self-expression, and authenticity posed by communicating in a second language.

Keywords: anxiety, language learners.