Stage-specific (Input, Processing, and Output) Anxieties:

More attention to the experience of L2 learning rather than the “simple prediction of its success” (Horwitz, 2001) started to emerge. Some of the skill-specific studies reported above investigated learner perceptions of L2 performance, suggesting a link between a cognitive construct, perceptions, and skill-specific anxieties, a finding of relevance in the present study. Saito et al. (1999) reported reading anxiety induced by learner perceptions of L2 reading difficulty. Cheng et al. (1999) also reported that writing and speaking anxieties interacted with L2 self-confidence (also see MacIntyre, Clement, Dörnyei, & Noels, 1998). These skill-specific anxieties and their cognitive correlates (self-perceptions) resonate with anxieties invoked by cognitive processes at the encoding and processing stages (reading and listening) and the retrieval stages (speaking and writing) in the L2 learning process. Accordingly, input, processing, and output anxieties have been introduced, viewed as a distinction that helps better understand the anxiety-L2 achievement connection (Bailey et al., 2000).

Tobias (1986) proposed a model for general anxiety at input, processing, and output stages. MacIntyre and Gardner (1989) pioneered an empirical investigation of this model in L2 learning. The study reported an L2-specific communicative anxiety that negatively influenced the learning of L2 French vocabulary over five vocabulary

introduction trials. It also impacted the production of learned vocabulary in a subsequent test and a free recall task. Anxiety effects were significant in both oral and written productions.

In a continuation of MacIntyre and Gardner (1989), MacIntyre and Gardner (1994b) investigated L2 development as constrained by language anxiety at the input, processing, and output stages. In this study, MacIntyre and Gardner provided a more elaborate conceptualization of input, processing, and output anxieties, and used three scales to assess anxiety levels at each of these stages. They defined input anxiety as “apprehension experienced when taking in information in the second language” (289). Processing anxiety was defined as “apprehension experienced when learning and thinking in the second language,” and output anxiety as “apprehension experienced when speaking or writing in the second language” (p. 289).

MacIntyre and Gardner (1994b) examined relationships between L1 and L2 stage- specific tasks and stage-specific anxieties in 97 L2 French learners. Language anxiety was found to correlate with measures of performance in the L2, and significant correlations were obtained between the three stage-specific anxiety scales and stage- specific tasks, especially at the output stage. Two of the three input stage tasks also correlated with input anxiety, prompting the researchers to argue that a smaller number of verbal statements go into the processing stage in high-anxiety learners.

Other interesting stage-specific results were reported as well. At the processing stage, the results suggested anxiety interference with encoding and recall processes; anxious students took more time to study the words and to complete the first test, but still scored lower than their more relaxed counterparts. On the second test, however, anxious students took more time to study the words but not to complete the test, and their scores did not fall behind those of the more relaxed participants. These results resonate with

accounts of anxious students being able to compensate for detrimental anxiety effects by extra efforts (Eysenck, 1976; Horwitz et al., 1986; MacIntyre, 1995a, 1995b; Tobias, 1986). At the output stage, the anxious participants produced shorter descriptions and provided fewer ideas.

Other studies investigating oral output anxiety and cognitive processes reported negative anxiety effects as well. In a validation of his Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson, 2001a, 2005), Robinson (2007) explored whether tasks requiring complex reasoning about the intentions of others will result in more syntactically complex L2 speech production. The study also explored whether anxiety at input, processing, and output stages interacts with the learners’ complexification of L2 speech. The study included 42 Japanese L1 university learners, and used Gardner and MacIntyre’s (1994b) input, processing, and output anxiety scales. The participants engaged in three dyadic narrative tasks at simple, medium, and complex levels of intentional reasoning demands. While the findings did not support the hypothesis that more cognitively complex versions of tasks promote more complex L2 production, they showed negative correlations between output anxiety and the use of complex syntax; low-anxiety participants produced more complex speech than their high-anxiety counterparts, and increasingly so across the simple to complex task versions.

In another investigation of the Cognition Hypothesis, Y. Kim and Tracy-Ventura (2011) explored task complexity and anxiety and their interactions in the development of past tense morphology in oral output production during task-based learner-learner

private university in South Korea participated in the study. Unlike Robinson (2007) above, the study showed that increasing the cognitive demands of tasks in learner-learner interaction resulted in more complex speech. In line with Robinson, however, anxiety effects were reported; the low-anxiety participants outperformed the high-anxiety ones across all task versions on both posttests. No statistically significant interaction effect was found for task complexity and language anxiety on either posttest.

In another investigation of stage-specific anxieties, and in what could be considered the closest investigation of anxiety in relation to noticing, Sheen (2008) studied the effects of anxiety on learner use of corrective feedback. Sheen focused on oral production and the development of articles following teacher recasts. The study included a sample of 45 ESL learners at a community college in the U.S. The participants were divided into four groups per two conditions: high/low anxiety and +/–recasts. The participants read a story, discussed it in groups of four, presented it to the class,

individually received teacher recasts with the whole class attending, and took immediate and delayed posttests. Similar to the studies above, anxiety was found to exert negative effects. The low-anxiety/recast group outperformed all of the others on immediate and delayed posttests. This group also had superior form integration in their modified output and repairs, showing better noticing and integration of feedback. The high-anxiety

groups, on the other hand, showed no differences regardless of the recast treatment. Thus, in line with Robinson (2007) and Y. Kim and Tracy-Ventura (2011), anxiety seems to have interfered with gains from the experimental treatment. Sheen explained her results

in light of student noticing, with the low-anxiety participants showing better noticing of the target form as presented in teacher recasts.

While all of the stage-specific anxiety studies above only draw on noticing accounts in explaining their results without investigating noticing as a study variable, a closer look at their results shows that the increased integration of the target forms would not have been possible without the learners having noticed the target features. Such noticing is expected through the input provided or through learner-learner interactions in the course of the experimental treatments, and learner noticing in these sessions seems to have been mediated by language anxiety. Accordingly, Sheen (2008) suggests that

“language anxiety can inhibit learners’ capacity to notice recasts and to produce modified output” (p. 846). This conclusion then merits the investigation of the anxiety-noticing association especially in oral L2 production given the consistent findings of negative anxiety interferences at this particular stage. The next section presents a theoretical rationale for a joint noticing-anxiety investigation.