The document discusses risk taking in language learning and the fears learners may have that inhibit risk taking, such as embarrassment or failure. It suggests teachers should create a comfortable environment to help learners take their first steps in a new language. The document also discusses anxiety as related to traits like self-esteem and inhibition that can impact risk taking. It identifies three components of foreign language anxiety: communication apprehension, fear of negative social evaluation, and test anxiety.

1. Risk Taking
 Would like to make error
 Learners have to be able to gamble a bit, to be willing to try out
hunches about the language and take the risk of being wrong.
Beebe (1983,p.40) fear of risk taking: 1. in the classroom: bad
grade in the course, a fail on the exam, a reproach from the
teacher, punishment or embarrasment imposed by oneself. 2.
outside the classroom: fear of lookingg ridiculous, fear of the
frustration coming from a listener’s blank look, fear of the
alienation of not being able to communicate with other human
beings,
How can we resolve this problem?
Dufeu (1994:89-90) says that teacher needs to establish an
adequate effective framework so that learners “feel comfortable”
as they take thier first public steps in the strange world of a
foreign language

2. Anxiety
Anxiety is a factor that is intertwined with self-esteem and
inhibition and risk-taking
Anxiety (Horwitz, 2001 ;Oxford, 1999)
 Trait anxiety is a permanent predisposition to be anxious
 State anxiety is experienced in relation to some particular
event or act.
Three components of foreign language anxiety have been
identified:
Communication apprehension
Fear of negative social evaluation
Test anxiety

3. It is a process of “putting yourself into someone else’s
shoes,” of reaching beyond the self and understanding
and feeling what another person is understanding or
feeling.
It is the major factor in harmonious coexistence of
individuals in society.
Language is one of the primary means of empathizing ,
but non-verbal communication facilitates the process
of empathizing and must not be overlooked.
Empathy is not synonymous with sympathy. Empathy
implies more possibilities of detachment. While
sympathy connotes an agreement or harmony between
individuals.

4. 4
Definitions of empathy
 “A process of comprehending in which a temporary
fusion of self-object boundaries permits an immediate
emotional apprehension of the affective experience of
another,” (Guioria, 1972b: 142)
 Hogan (1969: 309) defines empathy as “a relatively
discrete social phenomenon recognizable in the
experience of laymen and psychologists alike.”