The Effect of Anxiety on Serbian EFL learners’ Pronunciation Accuracy

Abstract

The present study aims at investigating the effect of foreign language anxiety on Serbian secondary school EFL learners’ pronunciation accuracy. The negative effect of a high degree of anxiety in EFL classrooms has been recognized in numerous studies (Aida, 1994; Kitano, 2001), especially regarding the overall communicative competence and the willingness to participate in classroom activities. The world scientific research abounds in papers dealing with the effect of anxiety on general proficiency and performance, however, the number of papers investigating the effect of anxiety on pronunciation is considerably smaller, and the situation is similar in the Serbian scientific context, as well. Hence, we aimed at exploring how debilitating or facilitating the presence of anxiety may be regarding the overall pronunciation accuracy, so we conducted a questionnaire incorporating a foreign language anxiety scale (Horwitz, Horwitz & Cope, 1986) with 62 secondary school EFL students and consequently divided them into two groups of high and low anxiety level, depending on their answers. Simultaneously with the questionnaire, the students underwent pronunciation testing, i.e. the participants were recorded performing three different tasks measuring their pronunciation accuracy. The results were quantitatively analyzed using appropriate statistical tests and they demonstrate strong effect of anxiety on pronunciation thus confirming the findings from a previous study (Baran-Łucarz, 2014). The paper likewise underscores important pedagogical implications regarding the effectiveness of pronunciation teaching and the possible solutions for overcoming pronunciation anxiety.