Learners’ Anxieties on Posting Their Own Speeches on Youtube.com: Facilitative or Debilitative?

Abstract

In recent years there have been numerous studies on anxiety, particularly anxiety and its relationship to motivation. However, very little research has been done with respect to anxiety in public speaking courses EFL learners. If public speaking often brings about a high level of anxiety for those speaking in their L1, for EFL learners the anxiety may be compounded by the awareness of their limited language proficiency as well as their very limited opportunity to practice public speaking. Yet, public speaking courses may be required if English language is their major area of study. As a result, EFL learners may often feel an overwhelming amount of anxiety, to the point of becoming debilitative. Horwitz and Young (1991) explained that there are primarily two types of anxiety: facilitative and debilitative. Facilitative anxiety motivates the student to “fight” the new learning task and prepares the student emotionally to approach the learning task as a challenge. On the other hand, debilitative anxiety motivates the student to “flee” the new learning task and stimulates the individual to adopt avoidance behavior. MacIntypre, Noels, and Clement (1997) found that those with high anxiety seemed to be in a viciously debilitative cycle, where high anxiety led to lower participation, which led to even greater anxiety, and hence even lower participation. The participants are 32 third-year college students in Taiwan with all learners at the low-intermediate to intermediate-level proficiency. They are all English language majors at a university of technology located in a rural section of northern Taiwan, and all were enrolled in a required two-semester course on public speaking and presentation in English. In order to study EFL learners’ perceptions of the role of anxiety in their public speaking course to find ways to help students to best cope with such anxiety, journal writings and surveys were designed to address the following research questions: I. Do learners experience facilitative or debilitative anxiety with regar