Abstract

Language anxiety is a form of anxiety that can negatively affect language learners by disrupting their cognitive processing, by rendering their learning experience unpleasant, and by reducing the quantity and quality of their language production. The language anxiety research contains many suggestions for anxiety reduction, one of these being the use of metacognitive language learning strategies. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a self-monitoring, metacognitive strategy called ASWE on the language anxiety levels of young male and female missionaries in the intensive language learning program at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah. The ASWE strategy includes four questions that the missionaries ask themselves during language learning activities: What am I trying to accomplish? What strategy am I using? How well is it working? What else could I do? The results of this study showed that ASWE use did reduce language anxiety, though the missionaries were resistant to using the strategy. This resistance stemmed from the missionaries' perception of ASWE as irrelevant since its effects are indirect. Despite this resistance, ASWE use gradually increased over the course of the study as the missionaries became more comfortable using it. The results of the study also showed that language anxiety was not affected by the amount of time spent in the MTC, which indicates that language anxiety does not decrease simply because of increased exposure to the language learning process.

Degree

MA

College and Department

Humanities; French and Italian

Rights

http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2000

Document Type

Thesis

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etdm75

Keywords

Language, languages, Study, teaching, Psychological aspects, Mormon missionaries, Psychology, Performance anxiety, Metacognition, Brigham Young University, Missionary Training Center

Language

English

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