Language Culture and Curriculum
Editor and Book Reviews Editor: Eoghan Mac Aogain (St Patrick's College)
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Volume: 15 Number: 2 Page: 143–160
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The Influence of Language Anxiety on English Reading and Writing Tasks Among Native Hebrew Speakers
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Osnat Argaman and Salim Abu-Rabia
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Language anxiety is a part of general kinds of situational anxieties related to oral expression and interpersonal communication known as 'communication apprehensions'. This research examined the influence
of language anxiety as measured by a special version of the FLCAS questionnaire, an accepted questionnaire in foreign-language research, on achievements in English writing and reading comprehension tasks.
Subjects were 68 students aged 12–13, with Hebrew as their mother tongue, who learned English as a foreign language at school. The research hypothesised a significant relationship between language
anxiety and writing ability, but not between language anxiety and reading comprehension, because writing is classified as a communication skill and reading is not. Contrary to the research hypothesis, significant
relationships were found between language anxiety and both reading and writing skills. This raises the possibility, suggested also in other studies, that language anxiety is not a cause of failure in learning
the foreign language but a consequence. Perhaps wider research is needed, including the examination of diverse variables such as mother-tongue abilities, general cognitive abilities, and language anxiety,
to reach more definite conclusions on the factors that influence failure in foreign-language learning. Such conclusions might require a reconsideration of the methods used in foreign-language teaching.
© Multilingual Matters 2002
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