Effect of Educational Strategies on Anxiety in the Second Language Classroom: An Exploratory Comparative Study between U.s. and Spanish First-Semester University Students

Numerous reports and articles have pointed out the mediocrity of U.S. students' second language skills, implying, for example, that students abroad may perform better because of an established educational framework with an 'early start' and 'well-articulated teaching strategies.' If this were the case, students overseas should demonstrate lower levels of anxiety in the second language classroom than students of similar educational level in the U.S. This exploratory study investigates and compares the perceived second language anxiety in a random setting of first-semester university students, in the U.S. and Spain, as measured by a foreign language anxiety scale. Although the study did not control for factors that may influence language apprehension, the results show that in randomly-selected settings, where an 'early start' and 'a well-articulated teaching framework' were part of the language background of students surveyed in Spain, their perceived levels of anxiety towards the second language (English) were generally higher than those of the students surveyed in the United States (Spanish).