Anxiety in Algerian students speaking EFL

Abstract

Being two-ways exchange between two or more interlocutors, the oral skill involves a face-to-face confrontation between speaker(s) and hearer(s). The oral skill inevitably involves a panel of complex affective, cognitive, emotional and situational variables different from the ones existing in the other skills. In oral classes, learners are found to exhibit anxiety, a high fear of rejection, avoidance and similar negative feelings that may result in failure in verbal performance. The main focus of this study is fallen on the learners’ emotional states as part of their EFL speaking and learning processes. The present research aims at exploring the nature of English language speaking and the variables that account for individual, interrogational and affective differences. Through this work, we aim to know if low anxiety leads to a better learning, i.e whether high/low anxiety is a good predictor or inhibitor of oral proficiency and communicative skills. For this purpose, we have carried out an investigation through a student-self-completion scale. Anxiety is a composite variable consisting of uncertainty and insecurity as a reaction of being called on without hand-raising, and embarrassment in speaking English in a classroom situation. This classroom personality is related to achievement in oral-aural comprehension and expression. The results obtained revealed that high-anxious students have their own preferences and learning styles and that they would feel more at ease if given more attention, time and moral support from the teacher’s part to overcome their unfounded beliefs and fears in a classroom interaction. Our sight has been directed towards this variable of a vital importance together with other co-existing sub-variables (motivation, attitudes, self-esteem…) through which the students “filter” their English learning and speaking. Throughout the present study, link was established between success in language learning and the approach used in language teaching, in particular between communicative approach and oral outcomes of third-year Annaba University students majoring in English.