Publications

Publication details [#63130]

Gorter, Durk, Jasone Cenoz and Alaitz Santos. 2017. Communicative anxiety in English as a third language. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 20 (7) : 823–836.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
Routledge

Annotation

This inquiry focuses on the link between three factors, proficiency, language certificates and bilingualism, and levels of communicative anxiety in the third language (English) in two groups of adult users, university students and young professionals. The first group consisted of 217 university students who were enrolled at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and the second group consisted of 135 young professionals working in companies and institutions of the Basque Country. The chief goal of this research study is to examine the communicative anxiety towards a third language, English, in a context where exposure to English is restricted and there are two other official languages, Basque and Spanish. A variety of instruments were employed to collect quantitative and qualitative data. Participants completed a background questionnaire and a questionnaire to measure communicative anxiety. In addition, focus group discussions and interviews were also employed. The results state that there are significant differences between the two groups of participants (university students and young professionals) in communicative anxiety. The findings also display the relationship between anxiety and some factors like the proficiency level, English language certificates and multilingualism.