Exploring Foreign language Anxiety Factors Among Students in Classroom Oral Communication

Abstract

The present research paper aims at exploring English Foreign Language Anxiety Factors in Students’ Oral Communication inside the classroom. The study in hand seeks to examine the degree of anxiety among foreign language students. It is based on the hypothesis that high degrees of anxiety lead to students’ reluctance to communicate. Therefore, to test this hypothesis and to answer the research questions, two data gathering tools were used: a questionnaire based on Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope’s (1986) Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale, and a semi-structured interview. The questionnaire was administered to ninety first year students of English while the semi structured-interview was done with ten teachers in the English Language Department at Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia University, Jijel. The findings revealed that anxiety exists among students in their oral communication, and that most students were anxious due to their fear of negative evaluation as a major factor provoking their anxiety, in addition to other factors like fear of failing in tests, low self-perception, and communication apprehension. Moreover, the study proposed some strategies for both learners and teachers to follow in order to help students cope with anxiety inside the classroom, and it ended by providing some suggestions for further future research on the construct of anxiety that may come up with better understandings and solutions to help students reduce their anxiety and thus improve their communication in classroom.