A Model of Foreign Language Anxiety in the Saudi EFL Context

Feelings of anxiety are commonly expressed by Saudi learners in their English as a foreign language (EFL) classes. These feelings typically exert detrimental effects on these learners’ foreign language attainment. This paper reports on the findings of a large-scale study for which three data collection iterations were conducted over three years to investigate the levels and sources of foreign language anxiety (FLA) among 1389 Saudi EFL learners. Learners were asked to report the amount of anxiety they typically experienced in English language classes and the potential causes that aroused their feelings of language anxiety. The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) was used to evaluate learners’ anxiety. Descriptive statistics, such as mean and standard deviation, were used to assess the levels of learners’ anxiety, and an explanatory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted to identify the sources that evoked learners’ anxiety in classroom-based language learning. Participating learners in the three studies reported moderate to high levels of anxiety, with communication being the key cause of learners’ language anxiety. The three studies’ findings were highly consistent, and thus, we were able to propose a context-based model of FLA in the Saudi EFL context.


Introduction
Teaching and learning English in Saudi Arabia serves a limited purpose because the language is still considered a foreign language in the Kingdom (Aljafen, 2013) and is not actively used in everyday activities.Despite the recent reforms undertaken by the Saudi government in the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language, most Saudi EFL learners do not possess even a modest level of proficiency in this language.One significant reason behind the low competence of Saudi learners in English could be the feelings of anxiety that are often prevalent in English language classes in Saudi Arabia.In English language classes in this context, most learners often appear reluctant to participate in classroom discourse, are unwilling to provide responses, seldom ask questions, are unwilling to engage in class discussions, and are overly dependent on their teacher.In such a collectivist country, the Saudi academic culture causes the teacher to dominate the learning process and learners to utilize typical learning strategies, such as reception, memorization, and reproduction, which appears to encourage them to be more passive observers.Given the highly negative impact that anxiety has always had on EFL learners' behavior and educational outcomes in the Saudi context (Al-Sibai, 2005), it is a vital issue to investigate this phenomenon in a greater depth in order to identify the causes of such a phenomenon and to offer some suggestions and potential solutions that could help both teachers and learners in Saudi Arabia to deal with the feelings of anxiety in English as a foreign language classes.

What Is Language Anxiety?
The concept of anxiety is a central construct in theories of personality (Al-Shboul, Ahmad, Nordin, & Rahman, 2013).In a broad sense, anxiety is a state characterized by the sensation of vague fear, nervousness, discomfort, and apprehension that is not linked to a specific cause or situation.Anxiety has been a focus of research in foreign language education since the early 1970s (e.g., Aida, 1994;Dörnyei, 2005;Horwitz, 1986;Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986;Horwitz & Young, 1991;Scovel, 1978).Young (1992) conceptualized foreign language anxiety (FLA) as a complicated psychological phenomenon specific to language learning.MacIntyre and Gardner (1994) also defined FLA as the feeling of tension and apprehension specifically associated with second or foreign language contexts, including speaking, listening, and learning, or the worry and negative emotional reaction when learning or using a second or foreign language.
Past research (e.g., Dörnyei, 2005;Ellis, 1994;Gardner, 1985;Horwitz, 2001;Horwitz et al., 1986;MacIntyre, 1998;Scovel, 1978) argued that anxiety in the context of foreign or second language learning is different from and independent of personality trait anxiety and state anxiety.MacIntyre and Gardner (1989) stated that the anxiety that specifically affects English and French vocabulary acquisition and production is different from anxiety in general.Dörnyei (2005) further noted that language learning anxiety is not a transfer of anxiety from other domains such as test anxiety or communication apprehension but rather a uniquely L2-related variable.

Characteristics of Anxious Learners
Empirical research has identified many features of anxious learners.Burden (2004) assumed that anxious students are often concerned about the impressions that others form of them.When these students are confronted in a classroom with a learning situation that makes them uncomfortable, they may choose to withdraw from the activity.Burden added that some learners believe they cannot perform in English and thus form negative expectations, which in turn lead to decreased effort and the avoidance of opportunities to enhance their communication skills.Additionally, anxious foreign language students are generally less willing to participate in learning activities and perform worse than non-anxious students (Aida, 1994;MacIntyre & Gardner, 1991).Moreover, Price (1991) described anxious language learners as those having manifestations in class that include panic, indecision, anger, and a sense of diminished personality.

Sources of Language Anxiety
There are numerous anxiety-provoking situations in the language classroom.Horwitz et al. (1986) identified three components of foreign language classroom anxiety.The first component is communication apprehension, which refers to "a type of shyness characterized by fear of or anxiety about communicating with people" (Horwitz et al., 1986, p. 127).The second component is fear of negative evaluation, which is broadly defined by Horwitz et al. (1986) as an apprehension about others' evaluations, avoidance of evaluative situations, and the expectation that others will evaluate one negatively.Test anxiety is the third component of FLA, and it refers to "an apprehension over academic evaluation" (MacIntyre & Gardner, 1989, p. 42).Young (1991) attributed foreign language classroom anxiety to six sources: personal and interpersonal anxieties, learner beliefs about language learning, instructor beliefs about language learning, instructor-learner interactions, classroom procedures, and language testing.Moreover, Horwitz (2001) acknowledged that the lack of perceived teacher support is a major factor that can evoke a learner's anxiety.Numerous studies (Oxford, 1999;Phillips, 1992;Reid, 1995;Samimy, 1994;Young, 1999) noted likewise that speaking activities, negative classroom experiences, teachers' harsh teaching styles, learners' inability to comprehend, learners' learning styles, and the learning context are all sources of learners' anxiety in language classes.

Anxiety and Language Learning
FLA has been found to adversely affect foreign language learning.Gardner, Tremblay, and Masgoret (1997) investigated the relationship between FLA among different affective variables and language performance and concluded that FLA had the highest negative correlation with language achievement.Previous studies also found that FLA is negatively correlated with confidence and self-esteem, attitude, motivation, autonomy, and other traits (Hilleson, 1996;Liu, 2012;MacIntyre & Gardner, 1991).MacIntyre and Gardner (1991) stated that anxiety regarding second/foreign language learning and performance affect at least five domains: academically (high levels of FLA are associated with low levels of academic achievement in second/foreign language learning), socially (learners with higher language anxiety have the tendency to avoid interpersonal communication more often than less anxious learners), cognitively (anxiety can prevent certain information from entering a learner's cognitive processing system, influencing both the speed and accuracy of learning), personally (language learning could become a painful experience that reduces one's self-esteem or self-confidence as a learner), and in terms of communication output (communication may be interrupted by the "freezing-up" moments that students encounter when they feel anxious).More recently, Batumlu and Erden (2007) examined the relationship between language achievement and anxiety and found that there was a negative correlation between learners' achievement and their anxiety levels.

Research on Language Anxiety in the Saudi EFL Context
Despite the appearance of recent studies that attempted to investigate various aspects of the concept, there is limited research on FLA in the Saudi EFL setting.These studies are sufficiently scarce that further research can be extremely beneficial.Abu-Ghararah (1999) conducted a study to determine the effect of FLA on English achievement.Using the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) and the grades given to 240 secondary and university students, a negative correlation was found between higher FLA and the students' English achievement.Using a multi-method approach including questionnaires, individual and group interviews, and classroom and informal observations, Al-Saraj (2013) gathered information on the FLA perspectives of ten female college students who were learning EFL in Saudi Arabia.Participants in this study attributed their language anxiety to certain anxiety-provoking entities, including the teacher, the teacher-learner interaction, the teaching method, fear of negative evaluation, competitiveness, and the communication style.Alrabai (2014a) conducted an experimental study to explore the effects of the teacher's anxiety-reducing strategies on learners' FLA in the Saudi context.He used FLCAS scores before and after a 10-week experimental treatment course to evaluate learners' anxiety and classroom observations to assess the teacher's anxiety-reducing practices; Alrabai established a positive causal relationship between teachers' anxiety-reducing behaviors and learners' FLA in that anxiety-reducing strategies by teachers resulted in low levels of language anxiety in learners.
Despite the valuable insights that these studies provided in identifying certain sources of FLA among Saudi EFL learners, the conclusions derived from such studies remain equivocal due to their limited scope in terms of number and nature of participants recruited.For this reason, a large-scale investigation is still needed to explore the sources and levels of language anxiety among a large population of Saudi EFL learners over different periods of time and to propose a context-based model of FLA for the Saudi EFL context based on the conclusions drawn from the findings of this investigation.The significance of the present study lies in that it promotes, through the FLA model it proposes, the awareness of the different partners in the EFL learning process in Saudi Arabia (e.g., the teacher, the learner, and the academic institutions) of the causes/sources of FLA in this country.This consciousness could help substantially in finding ways to deal with these sources and therefore decrease learners' anxiety, which would in turn improve learning outcomes.

Study Methodology
This study's objective is to empirically identify the sources and levels of FLA that Saudis typically experience when learning English and to propose a context-based model of FLA for Saudi EFL learners constructed based on the comparisons derived from the three studies' findings.

Participants
The participants were 1389 volunteer male and female EFL learners who were recruited in three data collection iterations.Participating students were Saudi nationals and spoke Arabic as their first language.Selection of participants (including their gender) was completely random, took place in both rural and urban areas of the country, and was designed to cover the different sectors of public education in Saudi Arabia as widely as possible.
The study recruited 915 English-major and 474 non-English-major EFL students from four geographic areas.Additional information regarding the learners who participated in the three studies is presented in Table 1.Note.FQ = frequency, % = percentage.

Data Collection
Over the three years from 2012 to 2014, the study data was collected via three data collection iterations.After they were provided with ample information about the study's nature and procedures, participants were asked to sign a consent form to confirm their approval to take part in the study.For underage participants (i.e., intermediate and high school students), their guardian's approval was also sought and obtained before they were included in the study.Only those participants who granted their consent were involved in the study.The participating learners received detailed instructions on how to complete the FLCAS questionnaire and were guaranteed that their responses would remain confidential.To ensure response accuracy and honesty, the FLCAS's questions were translated into the subjects' mother tongue of Arabic, and the verified, translated version was administered to learners privately by the researcher.This version of the FLCAS can be found in the Appendix.The learners required 30-45 minutes to respond to the entire questionnaire.

Data Analysis
Descriptive statistics were generated to identify the levels of FLA for the study's Saudi EFL students.Item analysis was conducted to determine the survey items associated with the highest mean scores, which would be indicative of the major causes of FLA for Saudi learners.An explanatory factor analysis (EFA) with varimax rotation was performed to reveal the underlying components and subcomponents of this measurement and thus identify classroom sources of FLA for the study population of Saudi learners.A model of FLA for Saudi EFL learners was proposed based on the EFA results.

Levels of Anxiety
We used the anxiety-level scale developed by Krinis (2007) to identify the levels of FLA among the Saudi students recruited in this study.On this scale, learners' anxiety levels are categorized into five categories that range from "very low" to "high" using the 20 th , 40 th , 60 th , and 80 th percentiles.Based on this scale, the subjects in this current research were divided into the five anxiety levels depicted in Table 2. Note.FQ = frequency, % = percentage.
Learners in the three investigations demonstrated similar levels of anxiety.As seen in Table 2, learners in the first and second studies registered moderately high levels of anxiety (M = 101.83and 99.60, respectively).In the third study, participating learners demonstrated moderate anxiety levels (M = 98.24).However, as a whole, the learners across all three studies were moderately highly anxious (M = 99.70).The largest plurality of participants in the three studies was highly anxious (37.77% in the first study, 34.33% in the second study, and 33.10% in the third study).Scores for the learners with moderately high levels of anxiety were the second highest in the three studies (22.47% in the first study, 20.47% in the second study, and 19.90% in the third study).A minority of learners demonstrated moderately low levels of language anxiety across the three studies (6.96% in the first study, 11.94% in the second study, and 12.23% in the third study).Learners in the first study demonstrated similar levels of moderate and very low anxiety (16.50% and 16.30%, respectively), and these values were similar to those for the corresponding anxiety levels of the learners in the second study (15.99% and 17.27%).
Findings in the third study were rather different; learners demonstrated identical levels of moderately high and very low anxiety (19.90%).However, the moderate anxiety level scored by learners in this study (14.87%) remains similar to those reported by learners in the first two studies.Over one third of the full sample of participants (35.21%) reported high levels of anxiety as the top percentage, and 21.02% were moderately highly anxious learners.Nearly one fifth of all learners (17.71%) had very low anxiety levels, with 15.84% having moderate anxiety and only 10.22% having moderately low anxiety.
An item analysis was performed to identify the survey items that attracted the highest mean scores and were thus recognized by respondents as the main causes of FLA.Three items obtained the highest mean scores out of all survey items and thus represented the major fears of Saudi learners in their language classes.As seen in Table 3, item 12 ("In language class, I can get so nervous that I forget things I know") obtained the survey's highest mean score (M = 3.65).Item 9 ("I start to panic when I have to speak without preparation in language class") was the second-highest anxiety-provoking concern for learners (M = 3.64).The third-highest cause of learners' anxiety was item 33 ("I get nervous when the language teacher asks questions that I haven't prepared for in advance" [M = 3.60]).The first item ( 12) is indicative of learners' fear of being unable to remember things that they already know or of their propensity to "go blank" with regard to what they intend to say due to the anxiety that they generally feel in language class.The other two items (9 and 3) represent learners' fear of communicating in foreign language classes because of lack of preparation, which has been established by previous research as a significant cause of students' reluctance to participate in English language class, leading to FLA (Hamouda, 2013;Tsui, 1996).In Table 3, the items of the FLCAS are ranked in descending order of the mean based on participants' responses in this study.

Sources of Anxiety
A four-factor solution emerged from the factor analysis conducted on the FLA data collected in the three studies.The total variance accounted for by the solution was 65.38% in the first study, 65.98% in the second, and 67.93% in the third, suggesting that it was a good solution based on Tabachnick and Fidell (2007).As noted by Guilloteaux and Dörnyei (2008, p. 69), social science studies typically detect meaningful correlations within the 0.3-0.5 range.Thus, we excluded items with an absolute correlation value under 0.3.Twenty-seven items out of 33 loaded identically on the extracted factors in the three studies, confirming that the sources of anxiety reported by participants were considerably similar.Twelve items (1, 3, 7, 9, 13, 19, 20, 23, 24, 27, 31, and 33) were indexed as the first FLCAS component.These items are indicative of learners' apprehension about communicating in English in class as a result of their fears of being negatively evaluated by their teacher and peers, and they are also attributable to the negative comparisons that students create between themselves and other EFL learners.This factor was therefore labeled "communication anxiety".
Six items (4, 6, 12, 15, 25, and 29) reflected the second component of the FLCAS.These items reflect learners' fear of not being able to understand and follow the teacher, and thus, they were referred to as "comprehension apprehension".
Six items (8, 10, 17, 26, 28, and 30) constituted the third FLCAS component.These items represent a number of the feelings and negative perceptions that learners typically express regarding their English language classes.Thus, this factor was referred to as "negative attitudes toward English class".This factor received loading from items featuring learners' fear of language testing (e.g., items 8 and 10), which indicates that language test anxiety could be a contributing factor to the negative attitudes with which learners frequently approach their English language classes.
The fourth factor attracted loadings from items 11, 14, and 32 and was labeled "lack of anxiety" to indicate the learners' ability to approach English language class and to communicate in the foreign language with no anxiety.
Items 16, 18, 21, and 22 loaded differently.Although item 16 loaded highly on factor 2 (r = .556)in the first study, it also loaded significantly on factor 3 in the second and third studies (rs = .554and .540,respectively).Thus, item 16 was considered a component of the third factor (negative attitude toward English class).Item 18 loaded significantly on factor 1 in the first and third studies (rs = .430and .562)and on the fourth factor in the second investigation (r = .528).Thus, it was considered a component of learner's communication anxiety (i.e., the first factor).Despite the significant loading of item 21 on factor 2 (r = .408)in the third study, this item was added to factor 3 because it loaded highly on this factor in the first and second studies (rs = .709and .587,respectively).Item 22 loaded significantly on factor 3 in the first and second studies (rs = .558and .449)and on factor 4 in the third study (r = .529).This item was considered a component of factor 3 (negative attitudes toward the language class).
Items 2 and 5 did not load significantly in the three studies.As seen in Table 4, item 2 did not load significantly on any of the factors in the third study; the same was true for item 5 in the second study.This indicates that these two items do not represent Saudi learners' perceptions of their anxiety, and thus, they were not included as components of the factors that emerged as sources of learners' language anxiety in this context.The first factor, communication anxiety, accounted for 22.30%, 22.17%, and 25.78% of the total variance in the first, second, and third studies, respectively.The second factor, comprehension apprehension, explained 16.34%, 16.06%, and 15.58% of the total variance in the first, second, and third studies.The third source of anxiety, attitudes toward English class, accounted for 13.56%, 15.08%, and 14.36% of the variance in the first, second, and third studies, respectively.The fourth factor, lack of anxiety, explained 13.18%, 12.67%, and 12.21% of the total variance in the first, second, and third studies, respectively.All four factors had Cronbach's alpha values greater than .60 and can therefore be considered reliable.In short, the figures reported in Table 4 indicate that the anxiety that Saudi EFL learners experienced in the classroom originated from a variety of sources.Based on these figures, Saudi learners' sources of FLA in their EFL classes were communication anxiety, comprehension apprehension, and negative attitudes toward English class.The fourth emerging factor was indicative of learners' lack of anxiety and could thus not be regarded as a source of anxiety even though it was significantly correlated with the other three extracted factors (see Table 5).The final reliability coefficients of the extracted factors (sources of language anxiety) and the Pearson correlations among these sources for the full sample of learners in the current study are presented in Table 5. Note.α = Cronbach's alpha coefficient, **p < .01.

Discussion
The figures in Table 2 indicate that the study's respondents were highly anxious.There are a number of reasons behind the prevalent feelings of anxiety in Saudi EFL classes.These factors concern the learner, the teacher, and the teaching and learning procedures and environment.
With regard to the learner, Saudi learners' low English language proficiency levels (Al-Khairy, 2013; Alqahtani, 2011) are a major contributor to the feelings of anxiety that they tend to have when learning English.Previous research has found that students with low proficiency levels are largely more anxious than those with high FL proficiency (Young, 1991).In a similar vein, the low perceived self-esteem with which Saudi EFL learners typically begin and the negative social comparisons with peers as a result of competitiveness in class could contribute to language anxiety (Hamouda, 2013).In this regard, it is implied that language learners who compare themselves with an idealized self-image (Bailey, 1983) and those with low self-perceived ability levels in a second/foreign language (Young, 1991) are most likely to experience language anxiety.The shy and reluctant personality of Saudi EFL learners communicating in the foreign language (Hamouda, 2013) and their lack of motivation (Alzayid, 2012;Khan, 2011) could be considered two learner traits that contribute to their language anxiety.The lack of group membership with peers, which results from the lack of cooperative learning in Saudi EFL classes, could also be considered a learner characteristic that leads to anxiety.The erroneous and unrealistic beliefs that Saudi learners typically hold regarding foreign language learning are a major contributor to language anxiety.Alrasheed (2012) and Daif-Allah (2012) noted some of the frequent misconceptions, for example, that mastering a foreign language is an overwhelming task that requires special learning abilities and a reasonable amount of intelligence, that younger language learners are more successful than adults, that learning a foreign language is a matter of only memorizing vocabulary words and grammatical rules, that a learner is supposed to be fluent or have a perfect accent in the foreign language, that learners should understand every word they read or hear in the language class, and that speaking in the FL should be grammatically perfect.All of these faulty beliefs give learners unrealistic expectations about the language learning process, cause them to become disappointed and frustrated, and thus lead to anxiety (Alrabai, 2014a;Palacios, 1998;Tallon, 2008;Young, 1991).
Previous research (Price, 1991;Shabani, 2012;von Wőrde, 2003;Young, 1990) has acknowledged that the language teacher is considered the key player in students' anxiety.EFL teacher characteristics and behavior in the Saudi context are considered major factors that evoke student anxiety (see Al-Saraj, 2013).Some but not all such practices include the absence of teacher support, unsympathetic teacher personality, negative evaluations of student performance, lack of time for personal attention, threatening questioning styles, intolerance with learner errors, overcorrection of students' mistakes or correction in a harsh way, and the sense of being judged by the teacher or wanting to impress the teacher.According to Williams and Burden (1997), instructors' beliefs about language teaching, which affect everything they do in the classroom, could be another cause of language anxiety for Saudi learners.Aida (1994) found that teachers' beliefs are closely linked to student fears.Most EFL teachers in this context believe that it is necessary for the teacher to be intimidating at times, the instructor is supposed to correct every single mistake made by the students, group and partner work is not appropriate because it can get out of control, the teacher should do most of the talking in class, and the teacher is the ultimate controller and leader of the class.
Teaching procedures is the third major cause of FLA in the Saudi EFL context.The traditional grammar-translation teaching method is frequently used, which focuses primarily on grammatical accuracy in the written rather than spoken form of the language.Some activities, particularly those that demand that students speak in front of the class, have been found to be highly anxiety provoking (Hamouda, 2013).The assessment procedures used in Saudi EFL classes, including those that depend primarily on written tests, and the continuous evaluation and overcorrection of learners' errors, significantly contribute to learners' anxiety.Besides, many EFL instructors in this context make the classroom a time for performance rather than a time for learning.The strict and formal learning environment in Saudi Arabia is a fundamental factor in learner anxiety.Tanveer (2007) stated that learners in the Saudi EFL context view the classroom as a place where mistakes are noticed and deficiencies are pointed out.Saudi participants in Tanveer's study reported that they found the language classroom extremely stressful because it was formal, their performance was constantly monitored and evaluated by their teacher and peers, and they were generally blamed for the errors they made in class.One male Saudi student said, "I get conscious, don't want to make mistakes in the class, teacher will put this in the mind and will give grades at the end..." According to Tanveer (2007), among many others, large EFL class size in Saudi Arabia is another factor that tends to limit student involvement in class discussions and promote some form of the teacher-centered environment.
The previous studies conducted in the Saudi EFL context have identified a variety of sources of FLA among Saudi English language learners.Abu-Ghararah (1999) has acknowledged three sources of FLA among the Saudi EFL learners recruited in his study: non-facilitative negative feelings, mastery of listening and conversation, and interactive approach.As part of his study on anxiety coping strategies, Alrabai (2014a) recognized fear of negative evaluation, communication apprehension, and negative attitudes toward English class as the main sources of FLA for Saudi EFL learners.In comparison with earlier findings, we noted that the sources of FLA identified in the present study were in line with the sources identified in previous studies, which supports the existence of these sources among Saudi EFL learners.

A Model of FLA in the Saudi EFL Context
Based on the substantially consistent findings from the EFA, we concluded that an FLA model could be proposed for Saudi EFL learners.When closely examining the factors that emerged from the EFA, we note that the respondents' FLA fell into two main categories: language use anxiety and language class-related anxiety.This categorization is consistent with that provided by Gardner (1985) for language anxiety in his social-psychological model.
Language use anxiety relates to the anxiety that learners experience when they attempt to communicate in the foreign language in class.Based on the findings of a further EFA on our data, this type of FLA is featured by variables including speaking anxiety (items 1, 3, 9, 18, 20, and 24 in the survey), fear of negative evaluation by teacher and peers (items 13, 19, 27, 31, and 33), and social-image anxiety (items 7 and 23).
As shown in Table 6, all of the main components and their subcomponents in the model were significantly correlated.The two main constructs in the model (language use anxiety and language class anxiety) had a highly significant correlation (r = 685).All of the variables in the model demonstrated strong reliability (> .60).These reliability scores and the significant correlations among the model's components confirm the proposed model's validity.Moreover, each of the two main components in the model had highly significant correlations with their subcomponents and lower correlations with the subcomponents of the other component (see Table 6).This further validates the categorization followed in the model.The first component of the proposed FLA model (language use anxiety) displayed highly significant correlations with its subcomponents.The highest correlation was between this component and speaking anxiety (r = .938),which indicates that language use anxiety stems mainly from speaking anxiety.It is not surprising that speaking anxiety was a major barrier to using the foreign language in Saudi EFL classes.This finding validates the conclusion of MacIntyre and Gardner (1991) that speaking is the most anxiety provoking of all second/foreign language activities.It is also in line with those of Al-Sibai ( 2005), who reported that speaking was perceived as the most anxiety-provoking aspect of language learning among the Saudi female university students who took part in her study.Wu (2010) pointed out that one of the striking reasons for learner reticence in EFL contexts was the lack of experience in speaking English because most L2 learners communicate in their mother language outside of the classroom.Wu added that students in this environment lack confidence in their spoken English and become anxious when they need to use English as a vehicle for communication (p.176).This is true for Saudi learners of English because in a country such as Saudi Arabia, where English is a foreign language, learners do not have the opportunity to practice this language in their daily life and their exposure to it is minimal.The only context in which Saudi learners are able to practice English is at school, which is not the best place to be exposed to the language.Schools are typically anxiety-provoking contexts (Iizuka, 2010) because in most school situations, learners are required to perform in front of their peers, are put on the spot unpredictably, work in fear of making mistakes, worry about failing exams, may have their mistakes over-corrected, and may have fears over their low proficiency in the foreign language.These practices ignite and intensify the feelings of anxiety in learners and make communicating in the language class their greatest concern.
Fear of negative evaluation had a highly significant correlation with language use anxiety (r = .913),confirming it as another significant obstacle that prevents learners from using English in the language class.Kitano (2001) investigated FLA sources and found that fear of negative evaluation was a significant source for this phenomenon.Fear of negative evaluation also had a strongly significant correlation with speaking anxiety (r = .766),which confirms that anxious learners avoid being involved in speaking activities in class because of a fear that they will be negatively evaluated by their teacher or fellow students.This is validated by the findings of the EFA analysis of the present study in that communication anxiety comprised fear of negative evaluation, and is also in line with the conclusions of MacIntyre and Gardner (1989) and Tsiplakides and Keramida (2009) who maintained that communication anxiety usually involves fear of negative evaluation.
Social-image anxiety had a lower, but still significant and high (r = .719),correlation with language use anxiety, confirming that it is also a contributing factor to keeping students from using the foreign language properly in class.This verifies that Saudi EFL learners usually focus on the social aspects of language learning which makes their self-images and identities dependent on their relationships with their peers and consequently can influence their FLA.This component also had similar significant correlations with speaking anxiety (r = .561)and fear of negative evaluation (r = .553);the two behaviors that are considered a threat to students' social image and are potential sources of anxiety.Neer (1982) argues that peer comparisons do contribute to speech anxiety because anxious students do not like to be compared with excellent speakers.Moreover, Kitano (2001) argued that among all of the skills taught in the FL class, speaking is typically the first skill with which learners compare themselves with peers, teachers, and native speakers.Furthermore, Kitano (2001) and Tsiplakides and Keramida (2009) concluded that students were experiencing English language speaking anxiety as a result of their self-perceptions of low ability in relation to their peers.Additionally, Aydin (2008) found that anxious students who generally perceived their communication as less efficient than that of their peers had a tendency to compare themselves with the others in the classroom and to adopt competitive behaviors, which creates language anxiety.
The second component of the model (language class anxiety) had highly significant correlations with its subcomponents as well.This component was mainly featured by the negative attitudes learners generally held toward language class (r = .867).Similarly, comprehension apprehension was also a significant factor in intensifying learners' language class-related anxiety in that it had a highly significant correlation with this variable (r = .843).Test anxiety was a third factor that evoked learners' class anxiety since it was significantly correlated with class anxiety (r = .790).
Many previous studies (Alrabai, 2014a;Linh, 2011;Na, 2007;Zhang, 2010) have experimentally identified negative attitudes toward English class as a source of FLA.There are a variety of causes of negative attitudes toward foreign language classes.Khodadady and Khajavy (2013) found that learners who lacked motivation to learn the foreign language had negative attitudes toward English class as well as English communication fear, fear of negative evaluation, and discomfort in class.In the absence of direct contact with native speakers of English in Saudi Arabia, Saudi learners do not generally use English for communicative purposes but rather study it as a requirement for academic or career purposes.However, this diminishes the value of learning English in Saudi learners' views, and it generates their negative attitudes toward learning this language.In addition, most Saudi EFL learners do not possess the basic proficiency necessary for even simple conversations, which exaggerates their negative attitudes toward English language classes.In addition, the unpleasant past English learning experiences that the majority of learners in the Saudi context have had, the unrealistic expectations, false beliefs, and misconceptions that those learners approach their language classes with negatively impact their attitudes toward learning English.Atasheneh and Izadi (2012) found that comprehension anxiety can negatively influence the process of communicating in the foreign language given that listening and speaking are two interrelated skills that make communication possible (p.183).Comprehension anxiety in the proposed model concerns listening comprehension, for which students generally have one opportunity to comprehend the spoken language, as opposed to reading comprehension, for which students can always return to what they do not understand and analyze it.There are a variety of causes to which the comprehension anxiety experienced by Saudi EFL learners could be attributed.The first is that Saudi learners are generally not sufficiently exposed to the foreign language.
Most of these learners do not experience even a single case of communication with a native English speaker throughout the process of English language learning because of the fact reported by (Kim, 2000) that the context of foreign language learning classes does not provide adequate listening comprehension moments due to the inadequacy of real-time communication opportunities.In the Saudi EFL setting, most class time is devoted to reading and grammar rather than listening and speaking.Another reason for comprehension anxiety among Saudi EFL learners is the lack of sufficient listening comprehension material in the curriculum that has been developed for English language teaching in Saudi schools and universities.The nature of the materials used for listening comprehension, the speed of the message delivered by instructors, the pronunciation (e.g., British or American), the topic of the listening material, the length of this material, and the level and familiarity of the vocabulary used in listening could be other comprehension anxiety-provoking factors.
Language test anxiety was the third subcomponent of classroom-related anxiety.Past research has confirmed that test anxiety among EFL learners is a significant factor that detrimentally affects different aspects of the EFL learning process (Aida, 1994;Ayidn, 2009;Petridou & Williams, 2007).Aydin, Yavuz, and Yesilyurt (2006) explained that test anxiety causes physical and psychological problems; negatively affects motivation, concentration, and achievement; prevents students from reflecting their actual performance in their test results and from studying efficiently; and reduces interest in language learning.Joanna, Hernandez, and Margaret (2003) established that test anxiety has negative effects on the oral proficiency of language learners.Young (1990), on the other hand, reported that language test anxiety is one reason for the negative attitudes toward the foreign language learning process.This has been validated by the results of EFA analysis in the present study since items concerning test anxiety in the survey loaded significantly under the 'negative attitudes toward English class' factor.
There exist certain factors that cause test anxiety in foreign language learning; including the Saudi EFL setting.Young (1999)  This large-scale investigation explored Saudi learner's FLA levels and sources in the course of learning English as a foreign language.The Saudi respondents who took part in this study were generally highly anxious EFL learners, with communication anxiety, comprehension apprehension, and negative attitudes toward English class being their main sources of anxiety.An FLA model in the Saudi EFL context was proposed based on the substantially very similar, and occasionally identical, findings of the three studies in relation to the sources of learners' FLA.The model comprised two main components that relate to language use, and class-related anxieties, as well as subcomponents that fell within these two categories, including speaking anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, social-image anxiety, negative attitudes toward English class, comprehension anxiety, and language test anxiety.
The study's contribution includes investigating the levels and sources of FLA among a large population of Saudi learners over a long period of time, which could allow us to draw valid conclusions and generalizations about the concept of anxiety in the Saudi EFL context.The FLA model proposed based on this study's conclusions is a major contribution that might be beneficial in increasing awareness among Saudi EFL learners, instructors, and policymakers of FLA and its sources and causes.This awareness could help in addressing these sources and could ultimately improve the outcomes of the EFL learning and teaching process in Saudi Arabia.More generally, the proposed model could help in FLA investigations in many other EFL contexts aside from the Saudi context.
The results of the current research indicate that the anxiety associated with learning English as a foreign language in the Saudi context is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon.For this reason, this study provides a range of implications and recommendations for the varied elements of the EFL teaching and learning Foreign language Anxiety in the Saudi EFL Context

Language use anxiety Language class anxiety
Speaking anxiety

Social-image anxiety Comprehension anxiety
Negative attitudes toward English class Language test anxiety process in Saudi Arabia: the teacher, the learner, and the EFL policymakers in this context.
Given the significant role of instructors in the amount of anxiety students experience in language classes, we believe that it is the instructor who has the supreme role in alleviating language anxiety among learners.Tanveer (2007) indicated that FLA considerations by a language teacher are highly important in assisting them in achieving the intended performance goals in the target language.Thus, most of the recommendations presented by the current study are for English language teachers.These teachers should first and foremost acknowledge FLA's existence as legitimate, and they should find effective strategies to help learners cope with its destructive feelings.There are many recent resources that EFL teachers in Saudi Arabia should consult because they present practical means of addressing learner anxiety (Alrabai, 2014b;Hashemi & Abbasi, 2013;Kondo & Ling, 2004;Nagahashi, 2007;Tallon, 2008;Tsiplakides & Keramida, 2009).In addition to reducing learners' anxiety, teachers should also build students' confidence and self-esteem in their foreign language abilities via encouragement, reassurance, positive reinforcement, and empathy.Teachers should create a warm atmosphere to motivate their students to learn English because motivation is negatively and significantly related to anxiety; thus, increased student motivation leads to decreased anxiety.Therefore, language teachers should motivate their students to decrease their anxiety in English class.In this regard, Dörnyei (1994) indicated that helping students to set goals that are not overly easy or difficult to accomplish and setting realistic expectations of students are two techniques that can be used to motivate students and reduce their anxiety about learning a foreign language.
With respect to speaking anxiety, teachers should remind their students that speaking anxiety is not only common among Saudi learners but is a universal phenomenon among foreign language learners.A primary step in helping learners with speaking anxiety is to become familiar with students' attitudes toward oral production and to shed light on the reasons that underlie their unwillingness to engage in speaking activities (Tsiplakides & Keramida, 2009).Students should be provided with as much opportunity as possible to practice speaking in the classroom.Opportunities such as English clubs inside the school should be introduced to students to increase their opportunities to practice the language.Classroom activities can also be linked to club activities and daily life.For example, students can be asked in the class to report on their participation in the clubs, or they can share their daily life experiences with their classmates.
In relation to the learning environment and learning procedures, teachers can decrease language learners' anxiety by creating friendly, relaxing, informal, and learning-supportive environments for language learning through their friendly, helpful, and cooperative behavior, making students feel comfortable in the language class.Language teachers should avoid beginning their lessons with activities that enhance learners' early frustrations.Instead, they should start with simple, step-by-step activities that enable learners to feel relaxed and gradually involved in class activities.Teachers must adopt communicative teaching approaches that provide language learners who have limited exposure to English with more opportunities to practice their speaking skills, and they must increase students' engagement in class activities.Certain learning activities, such as creating problem-solving situations and working through language problems through pair work, group work, games, and simulations, could be useful in this respect.Because Saudi learners' low competence in English could be attributed partially to lack of vocabulary and inability to master English sentence structures, it is recommended that activities to build the students' vocabulary be conducted.An atmosphere of warmth, communality, solidarity, and friendship should be created among the students themselves to reduce the negative impact of peers' perceptions and evaluations of each other.
Teachers should be cautious and demonstrate a positive response to students' errors.In this respect, teachers should inform students that mistakes are not a sign of failure but rather a normal aspect of the language learning process and that it is through making errors that one acquires language proficiency.As a positive response to students' concerns over the harsh manner of teachers' error correction, teachers' error correction techniques should be based on instructional philosophy and on reducing defensive reactions in students, as recommended by Horwitz et al. (1986).
To eliminate comprehension anxiety, instructors may teach specific listening strategies to help students listen more effectively and cope with their comprehension fears.Students should be trained to listen for the main points and to not expect themselves to understand every word while listening.In addition, when teachers feel that students are lagging behind and not following the material, teachers can turn to the learners' native language to clarify the point and then shift back to the target language (Atasheneh & Izadi, 2012).Moreover, teachers should pay special attention to selecting listening passages that are at an appropriate level of difficulty for the students.
With respect to language test anxiety, test makers should provide learners with a relaxed testing atmosphere, test content should range from easy to difficult, and test instructions and grading criteria should be clear to students.Students should be exposed to practice tests before they sit for the real test and should be given sufficient time to complete their exams.
This study recommends that learners themselves talk openly with their teachers, other students, and family members about their feelings of anxiety because such communication can alleviate these feelings (Campbell & Ortiz, 1991).
EFL policymakers in the Saudi context should involve English teachers in pre-service and in-service training programs on general psychology, including language anxiety.Such programs might be beneficial in enhancing teachers' level of FLA awareness and thus enable them to address the learners' feelings of stress and anxiety in their classes.To address the problem of overcrowded classes, students should be assigned to small groups.In this regard, academic institutions in Saudi Arabia must eliminate the monotonous bureaucracy and equip learners with adequate learning space (i.e., more classrooms) and well-qualified teachers.
Despite this study's valuable contributions, further FLA research is needed.There is a need to subject the FLA model proposed in this study to further testing and validation in both the Saudi and other EFL/ESL contexts.The FLA model proposed here was constructed based on learners' responses to only a self-report survey (the FLCAS).A multi-method investigation that examines learners' perceptions of their anxiety using classroom observations, interviews, diary writing, and self-reporting instruments would help in constructing a model based on solid and more valid conclusions.
Future research could investigate the relationship between the variables in the FLA model proposed by the current study and learners' achievements in the foreign language.This could be determined by a longitudinal study that investigates the different aspects of learner anxiety and achievement over different periods of time and establishes any correlations between these two variables to determine the anxiety variables that most affect learners' achievement.
Finally, this research was more concerned with investigating the general sources of anxiety among learners and did not explore the relationship between these sources and language learning skills.A further suggestion for future research here is to investigate the sources of FLA for specific language skills, such as reading, writing, and listening.Research in this area will shed light on the sources that lead to anxiety regarding these skills and how these sources can be addressed.

Table 2 .
Anxiety levels for learners recruited in the current study(N = 1389)

Table 4 .
Rotated component matrix (varimax rotation) of the factors underlying the foreign language anxiety construct for learners recruited in the current study

Table 5 .
Reliability coefficients (alpha) and Pearson correlation coefficients among the sources of foreign language classroom anxiety (the full sample of participants)

Table 6 .
Reliability coefficients (alpha) and Pearson correlation coefficients among the components and subcomponents of the Saudi FLA model Note.α = Cronbach's alpha coefficient.All correlations among variables are significant at the .01level (p < .01).

. Conclusions, Implications, Recommendations, and Limitations
Aydin (2009)ome sources of language test anxiety, such as perceptions of test validity, time limits and associated pressures, test techniques, test formats, test length, testing environment, and clarity of test instructions.Besides,Aydin (2009)reported that other test anxiety-provoking factors included low learner proficiency, the negative attitudes of teachers toward test procedures, students' attitudes toward language learning, test invalidity, fear of negative evaluation, bad experiences on tests (e.g., low grades), the difficulty of course content, lack of familiarity with the question types, and parental expectations.Figure1below displays the components and subcomponents of the proposed model of FLA in the Saudi EFL context.