Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety - A Classroom Perspective

Abstract

This paper reports on Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA), a topic that has long been a focus of second language researchers.
This is an important affective factor that influences the process and the outcome of foreign language learning. The first part of the paper
deals with the most important FLA definitions. A detailed analysis of the FLA research conducted at the Faculty of Philosophy in
Nikšiü,University of Montenegro, is offered in the second part of the paper. Participants of the study included students who are learning
two foreign languages at the Department of English Language and Literature. The research was carried out on a sample of 190
university students studying French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish as a second foreign language in a regular university setting.
The participants completed the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale questionnaire (FLCAS) developed by Horwitz (1983). The
primary goal of this research was to determine the level of FLA reported by the students. The obtained results indicate that the anxiety
from the second foreign language (Spanish, Italian, French and German) appears among the first year students, and, generally
speaking, it increases in intensity with the acquisition of greater foreign language knowledge during the two years of studies. The results
indicate that there is foreign language anxiety, and that it is still present with the increase of the years of studying, except among the first
and third year Russian language students at the English Language and Literature Department.