Anxiety and Learning

0 ver the last twenty years there has been a great deal of researc , in both the laboratory and the class oom, on the relationship between anxiety and various types of performance and achievement.1 A general conclusion of this research is that anxiety interferes with the academic achievement of college students.2 One clear implication from this conclusion is that effective teaching ought to incorporate efforts to handle the problem of anxiety associated with learning. Whether those teaching at the college level perceive student anxiety as a problem in their own classrooms is another matter. Teachers might not have this problem uppermost in their minds if, for example, it is not widespread or if the signs and results of anxiety are not clearly visible. A survey of sociology faculty at one large university showed, however, that most of the respondents did see reducing student anxiety as part of the task of teaching.3 Given that students' anxiety interferes with their learning and is perceived as a teaching problem, the crucial question is how it might be dealt with in the college classroom. This paper