Abstract:

This study addresses the problem that is presented at a public university that imparts English classes to the general population. Most students are young. In addition, a minority group of adult students attends. Older students take longer to complete class work. It is notorious that this causes them discomfort, which affects the motivation with which they started, leading some to drop out the courses. According to research in the field of language teaching, it has been identified that emotional aspects such as motivation and anxiety play a critical role in learning a foreign language by adults and that both elements, motivation and anxiety, maintain an inverse relationship. It is presumed that the differences in the development of activities that adult students present with respect to the youngest is a factor that affects their performance by causing them to experience greater anxiety. This study aims to identify how the degree of anxiety increases as a relevant factor that negatively impacts the learning of a foreign language in adults. Based on the fact that in the field of adult learning it is reported that adults experience greater anxiety when performing as students and in the area of language teaching it is exposed that learning a second language causes anxiety in a third of students. The generation of anxiety is approached from the psychological and sociological dimensions. It is explained how the school, while offering the opportunity to improve the life paradigms of individuals, can be an element that generates anxiety. Teachers can create conditions in the classroom and offer alternatives to students to reduce anxiety as a factor that can hinder the learning of a language.

Keywords:

Foreign language learning, adults, anxiety.