Foreign language anxiety in students with Learning Disabilities

Abstract

This thesis is about language anxiety, a specific psychological state that arises while dealing with a foreign language. Language anxiety can affect any student, but appears particularly prevalent in students with Learning Disabilities. The first chapter is a general introduction about how dyslexic students approach learning a second language, the difficulties they may encounter, and the methodologies and tools that may help them during the learning process. In order to contextualize, the second chapter presents some models of language teaching, testing and evaluation. In the third chapter, language anxiety is analyzed in various language education contexts through the lens of studies conducted by Horwitz (1986), Saito (1999) and Hollandsworth (1979) about Classroom, Reading and Test Anxiety. The specific case of language anxiety in students with Learning Disabilities is presented in sections 3.5 and 3.6, with a particular attention for teaching and evaluation strategies that could reduce it. The fourth chapter is dedicated to a study conducted by Paola Celentin (2013) of the Ca’ Foscari Research Center for Language Education, in the primary school of Auronzo di Cadore. The aim of this research was to analyze the approach to language testing and evaluation in both students and teachers in order to improve education methods and techniques. Celentin collected the data through a ten-item questionnaire administered to the students to understand how they feel before, during and after a test. This questionnaire, together with those administered to the students of the University of Texas (Horwitz 1986, Saito 1999, Hollandsworth 1979) were taken as a model and comparison tool for a further study (Chapter 6) at the Ca’ Foscari University. This study aimed to understand how dyslexic students deal with a foreign language lesson or exam, compared with their colleagues.