Alleviating Foreign Language Anxiety : A Qualitative Study on Classroom Situations and Effective Teacher Strategies

Sammanfattning

In many foreign language classrooms today, students fear speaking in front of peers and teachers, experiencing anxiety when they are tasked with an oral presentation. The term Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) was coined and developed by Horwitz et al. (1986) who described it as ''a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process''. This study aims to identify anxiety-inducing situations through teachers' perceptions and explore if English teachers use strategies to alleviate anxiety for their students. Eight English secondary and upper secondary school teachers participated in semi-structured interviews to contribute with their experiences and strategies. The interviews were analyzed through thematic analysis to gain insight into the participants' perspectives of language anxiety and how they would work with it. The results show that oral presentation tasks in the English subject are the most anxiety-inducing for students. The most prominent strategies used by the teachers to alleviate language anxiety were task strategies, motivational strategies, emotional strategies, and practice strategies.