Language Anxiety and The Classroom Elements That Provoke It

Abstract

Language anxiety is prevalent in second\foreign language classrooms. This study investigates the language skills that provoke students’ anxiety. It also explores which of the three types of classroom configurations (pair work, small group work, or whole group discussion) provoke the most language anxiety in second language classes. The study involved 28 “Bridge Program” students who were taking non-credit English classes to increase their proficiency level in the four language skills in order to pass the necessary requirements to be accepted into university credit-bearing classes. To conduct this study, two data collection cycles were used to answer the research questions. For cycle one, participants self-reported their levels of language anxiety pre- and post- task completion using an “axometer”, which can be referred as an “anxiety thermometer”. An axometer is a scale with a range of values from one to ten, whereby marking “one” means participants were self-reporting that they were ‘not anxious at all’, while marking “ten” meant ‘extremely anxious’. For cycle two, participants were asked to self-report their anxiety levels after spending ten minutes in whole group discussion, small group work, and pair work. The results of cycle one demonstrated that students reported that writing is the language skill that provokes the greatest anxiety. Moreover, it indicated that students are less anxious when the task is accomplished regardless of their fear of losing marks, errors, and social anxiety pre and post the task. Thus, students are leaning toward a ‘downward trend’ which refers to having a lower anxiety level after completing a given task. In the second phase of the study where the question involved participants’ feelings toward group configurations, students self-reported that small group work provoked the greatest amount of anxiety, while working in pairs incited the lowest.