Teachers: Research Practice / Talk 研究／実践についての話し合い 25 minutes / 25分 Foreign Language Anxiety in the English Classroom: Towards a Deeper Understanding more

Sun, Oct 22, 13:20-13:45 Asia/Tokyo

Language classrooms can be an anxious experience for any student, but a number of students suffer from anxiety so strong that it affects their performance in the classroom. This group of students may present behaviours that at first glance appear to be disruptive (Gregersen 2005) but these types of behaviours may in fact be a coping mechanism to deal with their negative emotions (Beck 2011). The Horwitz Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale may be used to identify the existence of anxiety in language classrooms (Horwitz, Horwitz & Cope 1986). I administered a Japanese translation of the questionnaire to 95 university students of which 85 provided valid answers. The answers identified that there may be a small but significant group of students for whom anxiety proposes a barrier to success in the language classroom. In this presentation, I show how my research may have identified that students have developed maladaptive ways of appraising their classroom situation and, in particular, the proficiencies of themselves and those around them. I then offer some possible solutions to identifying anxiety in the language classroom and ways in which teachers can adapt their lessons to be more inclusive of the most anxious students.