Abstract:
The study examined language learning anxiety factors, hindering EFL learners’ process of learning, particularly in speaking settings and recommended useful approaches to cope with it. Using the quantitative approach as well as a qualitative semi-structured interview and focus-group discussion method, this study tried to examine the factors behind language anxiety among Iranian language learners both in the classroom and in the social context. 100 TEFL students participated in this study. The language proficiency was measured by TOEFL IBT test to make sure that the students were homogeneous. The findings suggested a variety of approaches to cope with language anxiety. It also revealed that there was a significant relationship between the participants’ language anxiety and their language proficiency. The results of the interviews showed that the teachers had a key role in increasing and decreasing the students’ language anxiety concerning psychosocial linguistic factors. The findings of the study can be helpful for providing some teacher-training courses, teaching language teachers some effective psychological techniques to decrease language learning anxiety factors, improving language learning process.Keywords: language le
Machine summary:
Elaboration on Foreign Language Anxiety in L2 Speaking: A Study of Iranian EFL Learners Malihe Safari Moghaddam, Department of English, Neyshabur Branch, Islamic Azad University, Neyshabur, Iran m.
Other researchers also confirmed that language learning anxiety is one of the most devastating factor to language learning process (Dörnyei, 2014; Ehrman, 1996; Öztekin, 2011; Wang & Chang, 2010; Yashima, MacIntyre, & Ikeda, 2018).
Among these emotional variables, student anxiety has come to be known as an important area of study in second language acquisition because of the negative effect it can have on students’ performance (Azher et al.
It is also broader in the sense that it affects not only to the teacher’s evaluation of the students but also to the perceived reaction of other learners as well (Shams, 2006b) Horwitz, et al (1986) believed that, although communication apprehension (CA), test anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation provide useful conceptual building blocks for an explanation of second/foreign language anxiety, it is more than just the collection of these three components: “we consider foreign language anxiety as a different complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings and moods , and behaviors related to classroom language learning rising from the uniqueness of the language learning procedure”.
Horwitz (2010) has reiterated that the matter of understanding the relationship between anxiety and achievement is unclear The purpose and reason for these mixed results is perhaps, as stated by Philip, (cited in Ebrahimi, 2013; Nasir, 2015; Shams, 2006), that “a comparison of the experimental research examining the relationship between anxiety and second language learning is, to a degree, confusing, presenting some conflicting evidence and illustrating that anxiety is a complex, multi-faceted construct.