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ABSTRACT
Although the debilitative effect of foreign language anxiety (FLA) on second-language (L2) performance and L2 speaking has repeatedly been shown, it is unclear in what way FLA affects L2 fluency and the speech production processes that lead to (dis) fluency. The current study investigates the effect of FLA on the utterance fluency of Dutch learners of L2 English and their (recalled) speech production processes (cognitive fluency). Using an experiment with a within-subjects design, 22 L2 learners performed two speaking tasks in a high and low anxiety condition. Their L2 utterance fluency was explored quantitatively by calculating temporal measures, whereas cognitive fluency was explored qualitatively using stimulated recalls, for a subset of seven students. Additionally, participants reported on their experiences during the speaking tasks. It was found that in general, they felt more anxious in the high anxiety condition and judged their performance as lower compared to the low anxiety condition. Of all fluency indices, results showed an effect for filled pauses only. Additionally, heightened anxiety was significantly related to more use of silent pauses. Finally, the stimulated recalls revealed a difference in the number and quality of processing issues between the anxiety conditions, as participants reported more issues related to the content of the message in the high-anxiety condition compared to the low-anxiety condition. This finding contrasts with predominant hypotheses, which state that anxiety primarily impacts linguistic formulation. Thus, this finding calls for experimental research with different ways to manipulate anxiety within participants to further investigate how anxiety impacts cognitive fluency.
KEYWORDS:
foreign language anxiety; L2 learner; L2 utterance fluency; L2 cognitive fluency; stimulated recall
1. INTRODUCTION
Students of different ages learning a foreign language or second language (L2) at different levels experience that speaking fluently is hard to achieve and that anxiety while speaking can be an intense experience (MacIntyre, 2017). Anxious students experience more difficulty demonstrating the skills and knowledge that they possess (Horwitz et al., 1986). A body of research including meta-analyses has shown that foreign language anxiety (FLA) is negatively related to foreign language or L2 performance, including speaking performance (Botes et al., 2020; Teimouri et al., 2019; Zhang, 2019). However, most of the research on the relationship between FLA and language performance is correlational in nature, which means...