Affective filter in second language learning: motivation, self-esteem, anxiety.

Mtro. Francisco Campos Jimenez
PTC de Lenguas Extranjeras

Can language degree students learn better and faster a second language by boosting his/her motivation, self-esteem and his/her control of anxiety?

I certainly believe that students can learn better and faster by lowering the affective filter. Including; enough motivation, good self-esteem, and control of anxiety. All that may help students to improve their performance at learning. Motivation is one of the best tools or leverages we can use to go forward and accomplish the goal. Self-esteem will help  them to believe in them-selves, trust their skills and abilities. As a consequence anxiety will decrease by controlling best their fear to be judged or make mistakes when they speak. 

This concept was firstly proposed by Dulay and Burt in 1977 and then retaken by Krashen in 1985 as one of his 5 hypotheses. The affective filter refers to those affective factors that have an influence on the process of learning a second language. In the affective factors we can find different concepts depending on the author, but the ones used in krashen´s work are: motivation, self-esteem and anxiety. Listed and analyzed in this work. 

This theory is strongly important because it determines the input that the student will learn and how effective the learning process will be. The hypotheses cited before can work best if the affective filter works in favor of the student. This means if the student has his affective filter in an optimal level that will let him learn or acquire a language. “The Affective Filter hypothesis states how affective factors relate to the second language acquisition process.” (Krashen, 1982)

Krashen in his hypothesis argues the importance of the comprehensible “input”, and how the affective filter controls the quantity of the input that becomes “intake”. Thus the student can internalize the information and learn effectively. In order to achieve this goal the student has a screen that plays the role of the affective filter that helps him to turn the input into intake. 

Fig.  Operation of the «affective filter» taken from Dulay and Burt (1977) in krashen (1982) 

The affective filter can either be an impediment or a facilitator depending on its level, high or low respectively. According to Krashen; motivation, self-esteem and anxiety are the main factors that affect the learning process of the students. They are called the affective variables. 

Students who have problems with fear, nervousness, boredom, and resistance to change, etc. they have a high affective filter, that means that the filter will be blocked by those problems, impeding the learning process of the student. 

Students with a low affective filter tend to reach the target language easier because they feel motivated, have a good self-esteem and can handle anxiety. Here by lowering the affective filter students get more input that becomes intake and they learn faster. 

As it was stated before, the word Affective refers to non-linguistic variables that can affect the process of learning or acquiring a second language. Non-linguistic are the feelings or emotions students experience. For some researchers, feelings might not be important when learning a second language because they need to see and prove if they really work, but with this specific subject sometimes is not possible, it is just what the person believes and the image that he has about him-self, and the reasons why he wants to learn a new language. This might be the strongest method that a person can use to have success.