APTITUDE, ATTITUDES, AND ANXIETY: A STUDY OF THEIR RELATIONSHIPS TO ACHIEVEMENT IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

VICKI LYNN TRYLONG, Purdue University

Abstract

In recent years, much attention has been given to the impact of attitudes and anxiety on student achievement in the foreign language classroom, and teaching techniques and methodologies have even been developed for the purpose of alleviating anxiety in order to maximize learning. Although numerous studies have indicated that positive attitudes tend to facilitate language learning, there have been very few quantitative research studies on the role of anxiety in achievement. The present study, then, gathered data on student aptitude, attitudes, and anxiety in order to investigate the relationships of these variables to achievement on written tests, oral quizzes, and semester grades as well as their interrelationships with one another. Two hundred sixteen students in the first course in French at a midwestern, state university were included in this study. Test instruments measuring aptitude, positive attitudes, and anxiety in the language classroom were administered, and student scores on written exams and oral quizzes and overall course grades were reported by the departmental teaching assistants. Correlational analyses of the data indicated that anxiety had a negative relationship to achievement while strong positive attitudes had a positive relationship to achievement. T-test comparisons of the mean scores of students demonstrating high versus low levels of anxiety indicated that those who were very anxious tended to get lower grades. A similar comparison of students demonstrating strong versus weak positive attitudes showed that those with strong positive attitudes were more successful in learning French. In addition, there was a negative relationship between anxiety and attitudes so that students who were very anxious tended to have lower scores on the attitudes measure. Finally, in multiple correlations, aptitude, attitudes, and anxiety accounted for more of the total variance in all areas of achievement than aptitude and attitudes without the anxiety variable.

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

Language arts

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