EFL Test Anxiety: Effects, Sources and Strategies for Alleviating It

Anxiety is a phenomenon encountered by human beings within their daily experience. It is a psychological discomfort resulted from potential threatening situation. The ubiquitous nature of anxiety creates different subtypes such as trait anxiety, social anxiety, situational and test anxieties. Apprehension has been found to interfere with many types of learning but when it is associated with learning a second or foreign language it is termed ‘second/foreign language anxiety'. Interference of tests in almost all aspects of life normally creates a sort of tension and apprehension for the test takers and even for the others around them. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to increase the awareness towards test anxiety and its deleterious impact on learning L2 among the target groups like learners, practitioners, teachers and test designers. Additionally, it aims to uncover the causes of test anxiety and hopefully dispel some of the myths