The relationship between foreign language anxiety and self-directed learning readiness

Abstract

Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) and Self-Directed Learning (SDL) are two areas in applied linguistics which are researched extensively. However, the literature seems to be lacking studies which intends to find a correlation between two phenomena. For that reason, the aim of this study is to find out if there is a significant relationship between FLA and SDL. The participants are 104 students of English Language Teaching in Edirne, Turkey and the data collection instruments are Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (Horwitz et al, 1986) and Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale (Guglielmino, 1978). Correlational analysis reveals that there is no significant relationship between foreign language anxiety and self-directed learning, however, there is a positive correlation between test anxiety and self control.

Keywords: Foreign language anxiety, self-directed learning readiness, learner differences