Oratoria sagrada

Each year, universities across the country generate a great number of language graduates. Career-based anxiety seemed to be a precise indicator of the feeling of uneasiness to communicate, not in classroom, nor in real life situations, but in the

working context. None of the anxiety literature investigated final-year students and their language apprehension, which arise from students’ feeling of uncertainty about what they might face in the prospect careers.

Anxiety is clearly linked to future career as most students reported to have concerns for their future as language professionals. Like many excerpts shown earlier, career choice plays an important part in students’ investment in the language education. Sometimes the economic reasons mattered even more than personal preference. As discussed earlier, ought-to self was internalized to become the person’s ideal self. The desire to achieve TL proficiency was stimulated by the economic value attached to the TL. Such a decision influenced by the social context could be claimed as one dominant source of anxiety. This seemed to be a more specific type of anxiety among language learners.

Context of use is the major reason for the fluctuation of motivation and anxiety. When learners had a clear purpose of why they learn language and how they can make use of the language, they can visualize themselves as a language speaker/user, and try to reach the ideal self. “Learn first, apply later” could well describe the way language was learned and used in monolingual context where workplace becomes their first and most serious battlefield (S3).

According to Papi (2010), ought-to self correlated with anxiety while students with ideal self tended to experience less anxiety. This study found that when ideal self was formulated by future career plan—to improve oneself to meet competency level required by the future job, learners seemed to suffer a great deal from FLA. As using FL at work would be more demanding than using language in class or outside classroom context, even low anxiety students might suffer from career-related FLA.

“I’m more concerned about speaking Korean at work. In real life, I feel more pressure than speaking in class. If I make mistakes in class, the teachers will correct me. I can repair my mistakes. But to be an interpreter, no one will correct my mistakes. I couldn’t risk making any mistakes. I need to be close to perfection.” (S2)

There was a transition period during the last year of their study that students felt insecure about their language knowledge, having concerns about the applicability of their new linguistic knowledge in real-life situation. This type of anxiety did not emerge in the quantitative data—FLA level was at its lowest in the fourth year. But based on the students’ interviews, students in the fourth year voiced such concerns.

“I thought to myself I was going to graduate soon. How could it be that I’m not good enough? I’m not ready yet. I’m afraid. I feel lost. I will face real Japanese speakers but I’m afraid because my performance is poor. I try to encourage myself that I can do it. But now I still fear. (S4)

As experience grew and students become more familiar with the FL, it was expected that FLA would diminish. However, Toth (2010) argued that “long years of commitment to learning a FL and relatively high level of L2 proficiency do not necessarily confer a sense of confidence in using the target language to every learner” (p. 189). Toth’s observation was confirmed by the excerpt above. It suggested that regardless of proficiency or years of experience, the final year cohort was found to be riddled with uncertainty about whether their linguistic abilities would serve them in their career. The approach “learn first, apply later” might be the cause of this type of nervousness.

While Larsen-Freeman’s (2003) calls this symptom as the “inert knowledge problem”, it was found that there was another factor influencing learners’ career-related

anxiety. Learners’ career choice was found to predict anxiety. Certain job descriptions caused students more anxiety than the others as they learned more information from their predecessors who now had first-hand experience working in that particular job positions. It was claimed by the students that they would not feel anxious to have normal office work using standard FL, but for particular positions like secretary to speakers of the TL or language interpreter, they felt unprepared and the stress was really high.

“Generally, I would be OK to work and perform daily tasks using Japanese. But for some specific area like being an interpreter in the factory or hospital, I would be extremely nervous. I need to learn everything from the beginning. All Japanese major graduates who work as interpreter complained of the problems they faced. They said it was like they learned nothing from university, like they learned nothing in the past four years. The previous knowledge didn’t help” (S3)

Despite all these challenges, some students still aspired to become language interpreters due to its financial rewards and the fact that not many choices are available for the L3 graduates. They would not want mundane jobs that paid much less than jobs that required advanced L3 skills. As a result, the co-existence of high ideal self and high anxiety was observed in this study, especially in the case of Japanese learners. For some careers, the visualized self-image might result in students’ high ideal self, which instead of reducing anxiety, the challenge of working under pressure stimulated more FLA among fourth year students.

Concrete evidence was found in Japanese learners as the majority of students aimed to work in Japanese companies. The shift from grade focus to future employment was most obviously seen for jobs which demanded high proficiency from learners who

wanted to use Japanese for specific purpose, for example, as Japanese interpreter in factories or companies. Therefore, Japanese learners’ high anxiety is the issue that needs attention, as learners did not only express high anticipation in class, they also seemed to have great concern for their future career. The students, despite high

motivation to learn the TL for economic value of the language, found it difficult to face the reality of working requirements. Feedback from current students suggests that working environment is stressful as they found the jobs demanding on their language skills.

“It’s really stressful. Everyone cries in the first six months.” (S12)

“As I told you, Japanese in class is totally different from what has been used at work. Vocabularies we know aren’t useful in factories. How could I know the words for ‘screw’ or ‘steel’ in Japanese? We have a fresh start there. The boss also talked very fast. We couldn’t even catch the words, let alone interpret them.” (S4)

Students felt that a huge burden would be put on their shoulders as they stepped outside the university gate. At work they needed to assume responsibility for mistakes leading to miscommunication. To further investigate this issue, a couple of interpreters who have worked in the industries with about 10-year experience were contacted and interviewed to see whether students’ perception was correct according to the

professional accounts.

The interviews with language people in the business world1 provided very

insightful information about working environments and problems arising from working as language interpreters for Thai and Japanese colleagues. The interviewees

spontaneously mentioned the anxiety experienced in the working environment, which

1 _{Two female professional Japanese interpreters who the researcher knows were contacted and}

confirmed the students’ high anxiety about their future. To give a clearer picture of the context, the brief accounts are as follows:

“Every time you changed your job, you have to learn new vocabularies in the new workplace because in different companies they used different words to refer to the same things, for example, electronic parts or equipment. […] Japanese people also talked with different variety of accents. Some accents are difficult to understand. Typically, the boss is quite demanding. Sometimes they never worked with Thai

interpreter before, they don’t understand our issues. It is necessary to have some time to tune in. […] Very often, we got blamed for other people mistakes. The Thai engineers couldn’t give satisfactory answer to the boss, but the boss blamed the interpreter thinking we couldn’t translate it right. […] They pay you well, but you also have to prove yourself worth of the money. Japanese people are 100% into their work. They totally dedicate themselves to work and expected us to do the same which is different from Thai people.” (S12)

The time estimated by the interviewee for most new interpreters to be able to adapt themselves to work under high-pressure environment was six months. After such period, as experience grows, newly graduate students shift their status from language learners to become more proficient language users.

There seemed to be a transition period of anxiety between classroom and work. The career-related FLA also becomes visible in this period, which is more than normal classroom anxiety and communicative anxiety. More grounded evidence is needed to conclude on this matter. Learners felt that proficiency was not the only problem. Experience was also crucial. There seemed to be an urgent need for training or

preparation courses that would facilitate students in the process of becoming a language professional.

6.3.7 The Transition from Language Learner to Language User: a Comparison