An Exploration of Students’ Perceived Sources of Speaking Anxiety

Abstract

The objective of this study was to find out sources of anxiety felt by intermediate English language learners when speaking English, and to obtain instructors’ suggestions so as to decrease the learners’ foreign language speaking anxiety. It was conducted with 60 students and ten English language instructors at the Preparatory School of Istanbul Aydin University, Turkey; in 2019-2020 academic year. The research was designed as a mixed method approach. Quantitative data was accumulated by means of a questionnaire dispersed to the students; qualitative data was accumulated by means of follow-up interviews dispersed to the teachers. The results uncovered that the students had a moderate level of foreign language speaking anxiety. The most anxiety inducing items were identified as the harsh attitudes of classmates, having to volunteer answers in the classroom, a comparison of language classes with other classes, getting left behind and being corrected for every mistake. Suggestions from the instructors were creating a comfort zone and a friendly atmosphere in the classroom, doing group-work and pair-work activities, encouraging and praising students for their participation and avoiding immediate error correction.

Keywords

• communication apprehension
• language anxiety
• speaking anxiety

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