Foreign Language Listening Anxiety: Its

Dimensionality and Group Differences

Harumi Kimura
Temple University Japan

This paper investigates foreign language listening anxiety (FLLA) in line with
social and interpersonal anxiety studies. Language-learning anxiety has been
conceptualized as a unique, situation-specific entity, and recent research in second
language acquisition (SLA) has examined anxiety with respect to such skill do-
mains as reading and writing as well as in terms of spoken interaction. Too much
emphasis on specificity, however, might have led researchers and practitioners to
miss common features of anxiety as affective processes under tension. A Japanese
translation of the Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale (FLLAS), which
was created for Korean learners of English by Kim (2000), was administered to
452 Japanese learners. Data reduction through factor analysis indicated that this
construct, as measured by the FLLAS, has three factors which were labeled Emo-
tionality, Worry, and Anticipatory Fear. University major and gender were chosen
as independent variables, and only the levels of the former were found to be
significantly different in terms of one of the factors, Emotionality. Math students
experienced more arousal of fear than social science students in this dimension
of the FLLAS.
本論文は、日本人の英語学習者がリスニングを行う際どのような不安を覚えるかを調査したも
のである。韓国語を母語とする英語学習者向けに開発された尺度の日本語版を実施しその結果
を因子分析および分散分析を用いて分析した。その結果、専攻分野によって学習者の不安には
異なる型が認められることがわかった。その他の結果もあわせてモデルの構築を行った。

JALT Journal, Vol. 30, No. 2, November, 2008

173
174 JALT Journal

T
he impact of affect and emotional arousal in language learning has
long been underestimated and under-researched with motivation
and anxiety being the main exceptions. Language-learning anxiety
can be defined as “the feeling of tension and apprehension specifically as-
sociated with second-language contexts” (MacIntyre & Gardner, 1994b, p.
284). Much of the past research has been conducted on the aspect of anxi-
ety associated with oral production in L2, but recently interest has been
extended to cover all of the four skill areas: speaking, writing, reading,
and listening. The trend has been toward emphasizing the independent,
distinguishable aspects of this affective construct in each of the four skill
areas and the situation-dependent nature of anxiousness felt in specific
contexts. For example, Matsuda and Gobel (2001; 2004) studied foreign
language reading anxiety (FLRA) and suggested that foreign language
classroom anxiety (FLCA) and FLRA were distinct, although they appar-
ently shared an important sub-component: (lack of) self-confidence. In
this paper, one of the skill-based constructs, foreign language listening
anxiety (FLLA), is investigated to explore the internal structure of this
psychological construct using the statistical method of factor analysis,
and the identified factors are investigated in relation to two distinct vari-
ables, university major and gender, to examine group differences.

Literature Review
As reviewed by MacIntyre (1999; 2002), Horwitz (2001), and Dörnyei
(2002; 2005), anxiety has established itself as one of the important variables
responsible for individual differences in the success or failure of second-
language learning. The concept of language-learning anxiety is relatively
new, however, and Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope (1986) were among the
first to bring this affective variable into the SLA research trajectory, creating
what they called the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS).
From the beginning, there has been debate over whether the specific type
of nervous feeling associated with foreign language learning could be a
transfer from, or a composite of, other types of anxiety, such as test anxi-
ety, general trait anxiety, social anxiety, and communication apprehension
(Horwitz, 1986; Kitano, 2001; Kleinmann, 1977; MacIntyre, 1999; MacIntyre
& Gardner, 1989; Scovel, 1978). The current consensus is that language
anxiety should be seen as a situation-specific construct—i.e., a distinct type
of anxiety. An emotionally stable person may be nervous in the language-
learning context, while on the other hand a person with a predisposition to
anxiety may not show significant nervousness in language learning.
Kimura 175
Interestingly, the experimental study of MacIntyre and Gardner
(1994a) unwittingly indicated that language-learning anxiety could also
be induced by a non-linguistic, task-irrelevant stimulus. In this study, a
video camera was put in a computer lab to artificially create an anxiety-
provoking learning environment, and it “successfully” helped to impair
language learning—in this case, computer-mediated vocabulary learning.
Although language-learning anxiety might be situation- and task-specific
and also independent of other types of anxiety to a certain extent, L2
learners seem to become nervous in ways that parallel other threaten-
ing situations. This can be inferred from the physiological, cognitive,
and emotional reactions detected and examined in test anxiety—another
performance anxiety (Zeidner, 1998)—and also in social anxiety (Leary &
Kowalski, 1995).
Less-focused attention, less-effective information processing, and
poorer retrieval of prior knowledge are noticeable features of poor per-
formance in L2 listening (Arnold, 2000; Vogely, 1998). L2 listeners can-
not manage or control the input and are at the mercy of the delivery of
speech unless they are skillful enough to request that the input be slowed
down, repeated, or clarified. In other words, they may be overloaded
with unprocessed aural information. Listeners in L2 worry about mis-
understanding or non-understanding, and they fear embarrassing out-
comes (MacIntyre, 1995). Kim (2000) studied this specific type of anxiety,
FLLA, but two things are worth noting. First, Kim’s study was in line
with other works of research that investigated domain-specific anxiety
other than speaking anxiety in L2—e.g., Cheng, Horwitz, and Schallert
(1999) in writing and Matsuda and Gobel (2001; 2004); Saito, Horwitz,
and Garza (1999); and Young and Oxford (1997) in reading. These stud-
ies demonstrated the skill-specific characteristics of language-learning
anxiety. Second, Kim used the FLCAS as a model for the development
of his instrument, along with Wheeless’s (1975) Receiver Apprehension
Test, primarily in order to compare the construct of L2 listening anxi-
ety with that of L2 interaction anxiety that is experienced in instructed
learning situations. A considerable number of the items in the FLCAS and
the FLLAS correspond between the listening and classroom-interaction
domains. For example, Item 9 of the FLLAS and Item 8 of the FLCAS
both refer to testing situations. Distraction is the issue on Item 7 of the
FLLAS and Item 6 of the FLCAS. Moreover, one of the reverse items of
the FLLAS, Item 14, is almost identical across domains to Item 18 of the
FLCAS as shown below:
176 JALT Journal
Item 14 of the FLLAS: I feel confident in my listening skills.
Item 18 of the FLCAS: I feel confident when I speak in foreign
[-language] class.
Kim’s (2000) doctoral dissertation involved extensive research, in
which she observed that past anxiety studies had focused on overall
second-language skills, not on listening per se. To investigate the nature
and characteristics of FLLA, the author used (1) factor analyses of the FL-
LAS and the FLCAS; (2) MANOVAs by gender and major, among others;
and (3) correlation analyses between anxiety scores and listening scores.
The FLLAS was created in Korean, and the initial 41 items were rated for
content validity by five Ph.D students in foreign language education at
the University of Texas. The criterion for retaining items was 80% agree-
ment for each of the four categories: fear of listening to spoken English,
process-related anxiety, lack of self-confidence, and apprehension of in-
sufficient prior knowledge. The instrument was piloted on “a sample of
36 Korean ESL students and their spouses, all of whom were university
or college graduates” (Kim, 2000, p. 63). Eight items were removed after
the analysis based on item-scale correlations, and the final instrument,
consisting of 33 five-point Likert-scale items, was administered to a
total of 253 Korean EFL students. Evidence of concurrent validity was
established in Kim’s study by examining correlations with scores of other
instruments that measured related variables. The internal consistency
estimate of reliability for the questionnaire was .93, and the test-retest
reliability was .84. The items were translated into English by the author
and modified by a colleague for easier understanding and clarification.
One of the main findings of Kim (2000) was the two-factor solution of
her factor analysis of the FLLAS. She labeled the two factors “Tension and
Worry over English Listening” and “Lack of Confidence in Listening,”
respectively, and she found no significant differences in gender or major
(humanities and non-humanities majors) in terms of the two factors. The
only significant difference was found in study experience in private lan-
guage institutes or with private tutors in terms of the second factor, Lack
of Confidence in Listening. However, she used the two factors of the FL-
LAS, along with the five factors of the FLCAS, for as dependent variables
in her MANOVAs and made quite a few comparisons. In reviewing this
study, I argue that she may have missed differences when there actu-
ally were some. It is important, however, that she also investigated the
correlation between the students’ FLCAS and FLLAS scores and found
that half of the variance of the FLLAS was explained by the FLCAS (r =
Kimura 177
.71; r2 = .50). However, she did not show in what ways FLCA and FLLA
were similar and different—i.e., how they are related and how they are
distinct. She also found a moderate association between listening anxiety
and listening proficiency (r = -.36) and demonstrated the somewhat obvi-
ous case “that listening anxiety actually interferes with foreign language
listening” (p. 149).
In the current study, I narrow down Kim’s research scope and study
only the essential properties of the FLLA of Japanese university students
in order to search for an appropriate measurement model for this construct
using the FLLAS. These properties or features, which are identified as ex-
tracted factors, are investigated in relation to two independent variables:
gender and university major. One of the independent variables, gender,
has been commonly used in research but has produced mixed results in
this area so far (Campbell, 1999; Kitano, 2001; MacIntyre, Baker, Clement,
& Donovan, 2002; Young & Oxford, 1997). For example, Campbell (1999)
found that male learners were more anxious but that there was an inter-
action effect with the time element on participants at the U.S. Defense
Language Institute with a variety of L1s. After two weeks of intensive
language training, male students felt more anxious while female students
got slightly less anxious. Kitano’s (2001) study of American learners of
Japanese showed that self-perception of language skills affected the anxi-
ety levels of male students but not those of female students in performing
speaking tasks. In the Japanese context, Matsuda and Gobel (2004) did
not detect any gender differences on the FLCAS or the FLRAS for their
participants as a whole (first- to third-year university English majors) but
found a difference among the first-year students. It might be safer to say
that gender is one of the mediating factors and that a variety of variables
are involved both in the level of anxiety and in the make-up of anxiety
constructs. It is also interesting to point out that gender difference has
produced “inconsistent and inconclusive” results in the studies of social
anxiety (Leary & Kowalski, 1995, p. 123).
The other independent variable examined in this study is academic
major. This variable has not been used in anxiety studies but should be
examined because it could influence learners’ studying orientations or
attitudes toward learning. Humanities majors and science majors were
compared in a study conducted by Andreou, Andreou, and Vlachos
(2004) investigating the relationships among different tasks and the per-
formance of students with different academic orientations. The academic
departments the learners were in were also shown to be related to differ-
ent approaches to studying in Ramsden and Entwistle (1981).
178 JALT Journal
The research questions in this study were as follows:
1. What is an appropriate measurement model for scores generated
by the Japanese-language version of this instrument?
2. How do students in different academic majors differ in terms of
listening anxiety?
3. How does gender affect the sub-components of listening anxiety?

Method
Participants
A total of 452 students at a university in Japan participated in this
study. All of the students were freshmen, and they were grouped into 20
separate English Communication classes, with approximately 25 in each
class. There were 309 males and 143 females, and they were either social
science (bunkei) majors (251) or math (rikei) majors (201). The social sci-
ence majors met three times a week to have a 90-minute class, and the
math majors met twice a week for the same period of time. Each time they
met, the students studied with a native English teacher for 45 minutes to
practice speaking, and then they spent another 45 minutes in a language
lab where a non-native instructor worked with them on pronunciation,
intonation, and listening comprehension skills. For the cross-tabulation
of participants, see Table 1.

Table 1. Cross-Tabulation of Participants

Gender
Male Female Total
Major
Social Science 143 106 249
(143) (108) (251)
Math 165 35 200
(166) (35) (201)
Total 308 141 449
(309) (143) (452)
Note: The original numbers of participants for factor analysis are in pa-
rentheses. Three outliers were excluded for two-way ANOVA analyses.
Kimura 179
Materials
The original version of the instrument (the FLLAS) was developed
by Kim (2000). The items were translated by the author and modified
by a colleague in pursuit of “naturalness” in the Japanese translation.
One of the challenges of translating this instrument was deciding on the
terms to use for expressing the “anxious feelings” of L2 listeners. The
English version translated from Korean used a variety of words to show
anxiousness: worried, worry, nervous, confused, uncomfortable, fear, up-
set, tense, uneasy, annoyed, and frightened. Among them, “worried” was
used most often. The Japanese version had less variety, with only seven
terms. For example, the verbs “fear” and “worry” are expressed with the
same word, “fuan-ni-naru.” These differences might have had subtle but
significant influences on the endorsement of the participants. The full
Japanese translation of the FLLAS (FLLAS-J) can be found in Appendix
A, and a back-translation into English is in Appendix B. The words for
anxious feelings in the original were kept intact in the back-translation
and are indicated in boldface type.

Procedures
The instrument was administered in class on the last day of the course,
at the end of the second semester in the academic year of 2006, so as to
partly reflect what had been encountered in the communicative English
course. The 33-item questionnaire took most of the students about five
minutes to complete. The students then answered three more open-ended
questions, based on their answers on the scale, which were designed to
have them look back at their activities and performance in the listening
section of the course over the previous three months. The entire proce-
dure took about 15 minutes of their class time. Only the survey results
were used in this study.

Results
In order to investigate the latent structure of the questionnaire, a
principal-components analysis was conducted. Seven components with
eigenvalues of 1.0 or above were extracted. However, the EV > 1 rule
tends to overestimate the number of factors that should be retained (Hen-
son & Roberts, 2006). There was a sharp decline after the third component
(eigenvalue 1.53) according to the scree plot. Kim’s original research
extracted a two-factor solution, but in this study the items loading on
180 JALT Journal
the third factor were rather high (.72 on average) and indicated a shared
latent construct which was “anticipated apprehension.” Based on inspec-
tion of the scree plot and the interpretability of the factor solution, it was
decided that a three-factor solution should be rotated. The total amount
of item variance accounted for by the three components was 38.55%: the
first factor accounted for 27.78% of the variance, the second factor for
6.23%, and the third for 4.63%. The identities of the chosen factors and the
variance accounted for are examined in the discussion section.
Principal-axis factoring was then conducted using an orthogonal rota-
tion (varimax) consistent with findings in social psychology that there
are distinct dimensions to anxiety (Morris, Davis, & Hutchings, 1981;
Liebert & Morris, 1967). The appropriateness of the data matrix for fac-
tor analysis was checked using the KMO and Barlett’s tests (Field, 2005).
The KMO test showed a value of .92, and the Barlett’s test of sphericity
indicated a significance level of .00. These results suggested that the items
were sufficiently correlated that factor analysis could yield reliable fac-
tors. Seven items, which were loaded below .40, were considered weak
or double-loaded, and were eventually taken out (Field, 2005). The mini-
mum loading criterion for retention of items in the measurement model
was .43 (Table 2). Cronbach’s alphas were .85 for the first factor, .85 for the
second factor, and 0.80 for the last factor. Cronbach’s alpha for the entire
26-item instrument was .91. Item communality with respect to the three
factors is reported in Table 2.
In the original study by Kim (2000), two factors were extracted. One
(Factor 1) was named “Lack of confidence in listening,” and the other
(Factor 2) was labeled “Tension and worry over English listening.” I
modified these to simply Emotionality and Worry, mainly because these
terms better fit the emotional and cognitive dimensions of anxiety which
have been elucidated in the field of educational psychology (e.g., Morris,
et al., 1981). It should also be noted that a third factor (Factor 3), Anticipa-
tory Fear, was identified in this study. One last fact to report was that the
Emotionality component came as the first factor in this study, whereas it
was the second in Kim’s study.
Following the factor analysis and development of a measurement
model for the instrument, three two-way ANOVAs were conducted to
investigate the relationship between the academic areas of interest of the
learners and their gender, and the three factors identified in the measure-
ment model for the instrument. The Bonferroni method was employed
to adjust the p values for the three ANOVAs, and the significance level
was p < .017. Three univariate outliers were identified on the basis that
Kimura 181
Table 2. Factor Loadings from Principal-Axis Factoring for FLLAS:
Communalities and Percentages of Variance

Factor loading
communality
1 2 3
item 6 .45 .13 .02 .22
item 10 .43 .24 .13 .26
item 11 .49 .30 .27 .40
item 12 .64 .15 .14 .45
item 14 .53 .12 .06 .30
item 15 .46 .29 .22 .35
item 17 .44 .37 .28 .41
item 19 .46 .31 -.01 .30
item 20 .55 -.04 .21 .35
item 29 .53 .36 .23 .46
item 30 .43 .18 .14 .23
item 31 .53 .10 .06 .29
item 32 .51 .16 .12 .30
item 1 .35 .46 -.01 .34
item 2 .07 .54 .00 .30
item 4 .29 .51 .18 .38
item 5 .15 .46 .29 .32
item 7 -.00 .57 .09 .33
item 9 .28 .55 .14 .44
item 16 .20 .50 .28 .37
item 18 .32 .53 .03 .39
item 21 .38 .50 .16 .42
item 23 .25 .56 .23 .43
item 33 .29 .53 .19 .39
item 26 .18 .24 .67 .53
item 27 .19 .21 .77 .67
item 3 .31 .25 .12 .17
item 8 -.03 .33 .18 .14
item 13 .18 .20 .36 .20
item 22 .26 .39 .19 .25
item 24 .11 .34 .26 .20
item 25 .28 .00 .21 .12
item 28 .24 .28 .09 .14
% of variance 29.01 4.74 3.51 37.28
Note: N = 452. Boldface indicates factor loadings higher than .40.
182 JALT Journal
Table 3. Descriptive Statistics of Items in FLLAS in Terms of Factors
and Reliability of the Scale, Factors, and Items

N M SD α Total
FLLAS-J 452 92.83 16.59 .91 130
Factor 1 452 46.23 8.72 .85 65
(-) 6. 452 3.73 1.07 .84 5
10. 452 3.89 1.11 .84 5
11. 452 3.43 1.19 .84 5
12. 452 3.89 1.22 .83 5
(-) 14. 452 4.25 .99 .83 5
15. 452 3.35 1.17 .84 5
17. 452 3.33 1.21 .84 5
19. 452 3.45 1.27 .84 5
20. 452 3.78 1.29 .84 5
29. 452 3.97 1.01 .83 5
30. 452 3.24 1.30 .84 5
(-) 31. 452 3.89 1.08 .84 5
32. 452 3.30 1.13 .84 5

Factor 2 452 41.18 7.72 .85 55

1. 452 3.51 1.26 .84 5
2. 452 4.24 1.02 .84 5
4. 452 4.27 1.00 .84 5
5. 452 3.67 1.16 .84 5
7. 452 3.65 1.25 .84 5
9. 452 3.26 1.26 .84 5
16. 452 3.35 1.12 .84 5
18. 452 3.85 1.05 .84 5
21. 452 3.69 1.11 .84 5
23. 452 3.66 1.13 .84 5
33. 452 3.90 1.03 .84 5

Factor 3 452 5.67 2.31 .80 10

26. 452 3.00 1.30 - 5
27. 452 2.66 1.24 - 5
Note: Reliability scores for factors are Cronbach’s Alphas, and those for each of
the items are Cronbach’s Alphas if the item is deleted within each factor. Reversed
items are shown with (-).
Kimura 183
their z-scores on Factor 1 were below -3.3 (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007), and
these were excluded. The total number of participants in the ANOVAs
was 449.
A 2 x 2 ANOVA was conducted to evaluate the effects of academic
major and gender on Factor 1. The means and standard deviations for
this factor are presented in Table 4 along with those for the other two
factors. The test of homogeneity of variance was non-significant (p =
.25), and the variances between the groups were not statistically signifi-
cant. Homogeneity was assumed. The ANOVA indicated no significant
interaction between major and gender, F(1, 445) = .39, p = .53, and no
significant main effects for gender, F(1, 445) = 2.40, p = .12, but it did
show significant main effects for major, F(1, 445) = 2.40, p < .017 (.05 / 3).
The effect size, however, was very small. This was measured by Partial
ή2 and was .03. The students in the two departments were statistically
significantly different in their scores on Emotionality with math majors
being more anxious than social science majors. No gender difference was
found and there were no interaction effects on the factor involving the
two independent variables.
A second analysis was done between major and gender, and Factor
2. The test of homogeneity of variance was non-significant (p = .77), so
both groups were assumed to be from the same population. The ANOVA
results were not significant for all three sources—major, gender, and in-
teraction between major and gender. The values were: F(1, 445) = .03, p =
.86; F(1, 445) = .04, p = .85; and F(1, 445) = 1.61, p = .21, respectively. The
participants were not different in terms of the second factor, Worry.
A third 2 x 2 ANOVA was performed in relation to Factor 3. Homo-
geneity was assumed, with a p value of .37. The ANOVA results between
academic major and the scores on Factor 3 were almost—but not quite—
significant: F(1, 445) = 5.00, p = .03. There was no significant difference
between gender and Factor 3, F(1, 445) = .02, p = .88, and there were no
interaction effects between the two independent variables and the factor
scores, F(1, 445) = .02, p = .89. The data are summarized in Table 4 and
Table 5.
To recap, three factors were found in the FLLAS among Japanese
learners of English. The two groups with different academic majors
were indeed statistically different in their emotional reactions to the act
of listening in English but not in their cognitive perception of anxiety-
provoking situations or in their anticipation of worrisome situations and
consequences. No gender difference was found.
184 JALT Journal
Table 4. Descriptive Statistics of Anxiety Over Listening in English in
Terms of Academic Major and Gender Differences
Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3
Descriptive
SS MA SS MA SS MA
statistics
Total Total Total
Male
M 44.82 48.83 40.49 41.76 5.38 5.99
SD 8.36 8.07 7.28 8.21 2.14 2.61
Female
M 43.93 46.74 41.43 40.49 5.45 5.99
SD 8.86 10.32 7.44 8.00 2.24 2.41
Total
M 44.44 48.46 40.89 41.53 5.41 6.00
SD 8.57 8.41 7.35 8.17 2.18 2.60
Male
M 46.97 41.17 5.71
SD 8.43 7.81 2.31
Female
M 44.63 41.20 5.59
SD 9.14 7.57 2.33
Total
M 46.23 41.18 5.67
SD 8.72 7.72 2.31
Note: SS stands for social science majors, and MA stands for math majors.
Kimura 185
Table 5. Summary of Two-Way Analysis of Variance for Academic
Major and Gender on Three Factors of FLLA

Source df SS MS F ή2
Factor 1
Major 1 911.23 911.23 12.63** .03
Gender 1 172.95 172.95 2.40 .01
Major * Gender 1 28.36 28.36 .39 .00
Residual 445 32101.75 72.14
Factor 2
Major 1 1.98 1.98 .03 .00
Gender 1 2.08 2.08 .04 .00
Major * Gender 1 96.01 96.01 1.61 .00
Residual 445 26516.76 59.72
Factor 3
Major 1 26.51 26.51 5.00 .01
Gender 1 .13 .13 .02 .00
Major * Gender 1 .09 .09 .02 .00
Residual 445 2360.87 5.31
Note: **p < .05 / 3.

Discussion
Research Questions
This study examined anxiety feelings that Japanese university students
would experience in listening to English. The first research question con-
cerned the measurement model for the Japanese-language version of the
FLLAS. Thirteen items, related to the emotional elements involved in the
act of listening in L2, loaded on Factor 1. Kim (2000) took the emotional
component as language-specific lack of confidence. However, the items
clustered in Factor 1, Emotionality, reflected not just lack of confidence but
other emotional reactions as well: discomfort, dislike, annoyance, aliena-
tion, and intimidation. As a result, my broader term attempts to capture
the full operational bandwidth of the factor. Item 19 seems to be confus-
186 JALT Journal
ing because translation involves a series of expository mental processes,
but the phrase “end up” suggests that one has encountered a barrier to
thinking—it indicates a stopgap solution and as such might be deemed to
be outside of the realm of reasoning or cognitive assessment for the ongo-
ing L2 listening task. Likewise, Items 17 and 29 refer to new information
that listeners have to deal with, and which could throw their minds off
balance. Item 15 is about the confusion caused when the memory load in
the task of L2 listening is excessive. The participants who scored high in
this factor were not comfortable in listening to English; they experienced
arousal of negative feelings and emotions to the point of distress.
The second factor, Worry, appears to be basically related to the cogni-
tive perceptions of the tasks at hand for L2 listeners. This factor garnered
high loadings from 11 items that describe situations that may give rise to
feelings of worry involved in processing the auditory information. Items
7 and 23 are about understanding the ideas expressed, and items 5 and 16
focus on world knowledge. Concerns about vocabulary are expressed in
Items 1, 9, and 33, and the delivery of the message is the source of anxiety
in Items 4, 18, and 21—speed, time allocation, and pace, respectively. At
first sight, the items that are clustered together in Factor 2 vary in their
properties, but all of the statements have something to do with cognition.
These items indicate that participants are monitoring and evaluating what
they are doing and how they are managing the specific tasks involved in
L2 listening. They perceive difficulties in dealing with the information in
terms of interpersonal and social expectations, which causes Worry. The
perception of the task while in a state of worry may also interfere with
effective processing of the language input, as observed in MacIntyre and
Gardner (1991, 1994a, 1994b). It will diminish the listener’s capacity to
pay attention to the linguistic stimuli and the encoding and interpreta-
tion of the information.
The third factor, Anticipatory Fear, may be the most controversial, and
indeed this factor did not surface in Kim’s (2000) original research, nor
has it surfaced in other anxiety constructs in SLA, but the loadings, .67
for Item 26 and .77 for Item 27, are the highest among the loadings of
all the items. There are four possible explanations. First, the two items
indicate the anticipatory aspect of anxiety as a psychological construct.
Anxious feelings, especially the feeling of being worried, can be learned
patterns of thinking, but they are also future-oriented. People feel worried
because they know of possible negative outcomes, and because of this
worry they try to avoid or withdraw from future encounters with similar
situations. Thus, the items are about possible future events and should be
Kimura 187
distinguished from the other items. Second, listening is a highly anxiety-
provoking activity in that listeners do not have as much control as do
speakers, writers, or readers. Listeners cannot usually stop the aural flow
of the incoming language or stop to think, and in this sense their locus of
control becomes external rather than internal. This vulnerability may be
the subject of the anticipatory aspect of anxiety being manifested. Item 26
refers to imagining oneself listening on the telephone, which can pose a
very anxious situation for L2 listeners. Item 27 is also about listening to
a lecture in L2, which the listener might expect to be incomprehensible.
A third explanation might be found in the wording, as referred to in the
results section. FLLA-J used the expression “souzou-suru” (“imagin-
ing”), which has to do with the learners using their imagination. This
“imaginative” aspect might be emphasized with the connotation of fear-
ful situations in the translation, in which the Japanese items stood out. It
could therefore be considered an item-format effect.
One last explanation with respect to the third factor concerns the cul-
tural aspect of learners’ ways of thinking. Yamashiro and McLaughlin
(2001) described this as the notion of “face” and collective thinking in
interpersonal situations, which may cause Japanese learners of English
to feel concerned about being evaluated by others or nervous about
negative outcomes in L2 listening situations. The establishment of iden-
tity and self-presentation depends largely upon how others perceive us.
These four possible accounts are all speculations, but their implications
for future research may be worth exploring.
The second and third research questions are discussed in relation to
group differences. University major did—although gender did not—make
a difference in the anxiety scores in this study. Also, statistical signifi-
cance was demonstrated with respect to the two independent variables
only in Factor 1, Emotionality. Math students scored higher on this factor,
but not on the others, Worry and Anticipatory Fear. It is not clear why stu-
dents in different departments displayed different patterns with respect
to Factor 1, but they might be distinct in their studying orientations or
approaches to learning. Such difference has been detected in Andreou,
Andreou, and Vlachos (2004) in SLA, and in Drew and Watkins (1998)
and Ramsden and Entwistle (1981) in education. This line of argument in
EFL and ESL settings awaits further research, but considering the small
effect size in the variable “major” and on only one factor, it is arguable
that the occurrence of FLLA is a function of a variety of person-specific,
group-related, and situational variables. Person-specific variables could
include personality, tendency to feel anxiety, self-knowledge, and past
188 JALT Journal
language-learning experience, among others. Some of the potential group
differences can be race, gender, age, university major, and first language.
Situational variables could be interpersonal or related to specific listening
tasks. Temporal factors such as fatigue and disturbance might also have
to be considered. L2 listeners may experience discomfort to different
degrees and for diverse reasons or combinations of reasons. At the same
time, all of the participants were from the two departments of the same
university, and thus they were not dissimilar enough to diverge in terms
of these three factors identified in the FLLAS.

Implications
Anxiety research in educational psychology and social psychology has
reported that skills-acquisition treatments were effective in the cognitive
aspect of anxiety, Worry, and that desensitization and relaxation worked
better in the reduction of Emotionality (Leary & Kowalski, 1995; Morris,
et al., 1981; Zeidner, 1998). These results indicate that in this particular
teaching/learning context, strategy training and awareness-raising in L2
listening strategies would be promising for learners in both departments
to help reduce the level of anxiety, and that a reassuring environment
might be necessary, especially for math majors. In the area of SLA, learn-
ers who participated in the Vogely (1998) study cited inappropriate strat-
egies as a source of listening-related anxiety, and this idea is consistent
with the findings of this study.
Some recent studies performed in EFL settings in Japan have examined
anxiety-reducing measures and learner emotions. Kondo and Ying-Ling
(2004) demonstrated that the overall level of anxiety and the frequency of
strategy use were negatively correlated and that active, problem-focused
coping measures can be effective. A descriptive study conducted by
Tani-Fukuchi (2005) was intriguing in that 68 percent of her participants
reported negative feelings such as anxiety, tense feelings, confusion,
discomfort, resistance, and apathy, among others, while only 18 percent
reported that they had experienced positive emotions while learning
English. The author stated that this predominance of negative emotions
should be dealt with and that treatment measures must be incorporated
into curriculum and program planning. However, neither study took into
account the ideas that learners might not be unitary in the dimensional
formulation of their nervous feelings and that the composition of factors
influencing anxious feelings might also be as important as the strength of
those feelings.
Kimura 189
Language-learning anxiety has been investigated in different skill
domains, which represents a movement toward greater sophistication of
research in this field. However, feelings of worry aroused in association
with language learning may well have some characteristics in common
across skill areas and across situations. In addition, it has been reported
that socially anxious individuals tend to experience fear in multiple situ-
ations (Heimberg, Liebowitz, Hope, & Schneider, 1995). Just emphasizing
the specificity might not be as rewarding as it looks. One way of meas-
uring specificity v. generality would be to test participants using both
general trait-anxiety scales and situation-specific scales like the FLLAS,
and then examine the extent to which the general trait measure predicts
the situational measure. In this study, L2 listening anxiety was shown to
be susceptible to group differences. In future research, it will be necessary
to investigate situational differences as well as social and cultural influ-
ences and their changes over time.
There are some limitations to this study that need to be pointed out.
One is that the number of participants was not well balanced either
between the two academic majors or in terms of gender (see Table 1).
Another limitation is the small number of items that were clustered in
Factor 3. Still another caution concerns the wording of items on the scale.
In affective scales, which try to tap into learner psychology, subtle conno-
tations and combinations of words used in items will affect the responses
and thus the participants’ scores.

Conclusion
Listening in a foreign language can be anxiety-provoking, even though
listening is a receptive skill. The anxiety felt by L2 listeners seems to have
features specific to listening in L2 but also common underlying charac-
teristics that are shared by emotionally and cognitively distressed people
generally—namely, Emotionality and Worry. Also, the anticipatory aspect
of L2 listening might be another feature influencing learners’ psychologi-
cal state: Anticipatory Fear. In this study, university major was found to
have a statistically significant effect on the level of Emotionality.

Acknowledgements
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all the participants in
this study for their cooperation and my teachers at Temple University
Japan for their dedicated support. I am also deeply grateful to the editors,
190 JALT Journal
Steve Cornwell and Ian Isemonger, and the two anonymous reviewers
for their insightful comments and helpful suggestions. Any shortcomings
and mistakes are mine.

Harumi Kimura studies at Temple University, Japan. Her research interests

range from cooperative learning to psychology of language learners.

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Appendix A
Japanese Translation of Foreign Language Listening Anxiety (FLLAS-J)
1.　英語を聞くとき、１つか２つの知らない単語にとまどってしまう。
2.　英語のリスニングテストが一回しか読まれないと緊張する。
3.　日本人の話す英語は分かりやすいが、それ以外の英語を聞くのは難しい。
4.　あまりに早く英語で話されると、全部理解できないのではないかと不安にな
る。
5.　よく知らないトピックについて英語で聞くのは、落ち着かない。
6.　英語を聞き逃しても、そこの意味を推測するのは簡単だ。
7.　リスニング中に少しでも気が散ってしまうと、大切な点を聞き逃したのではな
いかと心配になる。
8.　リスニング中に話者の口や表情が見えないと不安になる。
9.　リスニングテストの最中、１つ１つの単語を理解できないと緊張するし混乱す
る。
10.　英語の聞き取りでは、１つ１つの単語を区別するのが難しい。
11.　スクリプトなしで英語を聞くのは落ち着かない。
12.　口頭で行われる英語の指示についていくのは大変だ。
13.　話し手が自分のよく知らない人だと、集中して聞けない。
14.　英語のリスニングには自信がある。
15.　英語を聞くと混乱して、何を聞いたか覚えていられないことが多い。
16.　リスニングの際、そのトピックの不十分な知識に不安になる。
17.　英語で重要な情報を聞いていると、頭が混乱してしまう。
18.　英語で聞いた内容に関してあまり考える時間がないと、心配になる。
19.　英語を聞いているとき、内容を理解せずに１つ１つの単語を訳してしまって
いることがよくある。
20.　できれば、人の話は英語で聞きたくない。
21.　自分のペースで英語が聞けないと、不安になる。
22.　自分以外の人は英語をよく理解していると、いつも思ってしまう。
23.　自分が英語を正確に理解したかどうかわからないとき、焦ってしまう。
24.　小さな声で英語を話されると、理解できていないのではないかと心配にな
る。
25.　聴衆のひとりとしてなら、英語を聞くことに不安はない。
26.　電話で英語を聞くときや、その場面を想像してみただけでも、緊張する。
27.　講演会などで英語を聞いたり、その場面を想像してみただけでも、緊張する。
28.　少しでも騒音があると、英語は聞き取りにくい。
29.　英語で新しい情報を聞くのは不安だ。
30.　英語を聞いていて、理解できない単語に出会うといらいらする。
31.　英語の強弱（ストレス）やイントネーションには慣れている。
32.　英語のリスニングで、単語は理解できても話し手の言いたいことは理解でき
ていないことが多い。
33.　リスニングでキーワードが聞き取れないと心配になる。
194 JALT Journal
Appendix B
Back-translation of Foreign Language Listening Anxiety (FLLAS-J)

When listening to English:

1. I get stuck with one or two unfamiliar words.
2. I get nervous if listening test passages are read just once.
3. It is difficult to understand people with English pronunciation that
is different from mine.
4. I worry that I might not be able to understand when people talk too
fast.
5. I am nervous when I’m not familiar with the topic.
6. It is easy to make guesses about the parts I missed.
7. I worry that I might have missed important information while I was
distracted.
8. I am worried when I cannot see the lips or facial expressions of the
person.
9. I get nervous and confused when I don’t understand every word in
listening test situations.
10. It is difficult to differentiate words.
11. I feel uncomfortable listening without a chance to read the tran-
script of the speech.
12. I have difficulty in understanding oral instructions.
13. It is difficult to concentrate on and hear a speaker I do not know
well.
14. I feel confident in my listening skills.
15. I often get so confused that I cannot remember what I have heard.
16. I fear I might have an inadequate knowledge about the topic.
17. My thoughts become jumbled and confused in listening for
important information.
Kimura 195
18. I get worried when I have little time to think about what I have
heard.
19. I often end up translating word by word without understanding
what I’m listening to.
20. I would rather not listen to people talking in English.
21. I get worried when I cannot listen at the pace I’m comfortable with.
22. I tend to think that other people understand the content well
enough.
23. I get upset when I’m not sure whether I have understood well.
24. I am worried I might not understand when the person lowers their
voice while speaking in English.
25. I have no fear of listening to public speeches in English.
26. I am nervous when listening to English over the phone or when
imagining myself listening over the phone.
27. I feel tense when listening to, or imagining myself listening to, a
lecture.
28. I have difficulty when the environment around me is noisy.
29. Listening to new information makes me uneasy.
30. I get annoyed when I come across new words.
31. English stress and intonation patterns are familiar to me.
32. It often happens that I do not understand what English speakers
say.
33. The thought that I may be missing key words frightens me.

Note. The original English translation from Korean was published in Kim
(2000).
196 JALT Journal