LANGUAGE ANXIETY FROM THE TEACHER’S PERSPECTIVE: INTERVIEWS WITH SEVEN EXPERIENCED ESL/EFL TEACHERS

Abstract

This study examines the teachers' views or assumptions on the phenomenon of language anxiety, especially as to how they have perceived and dealt with student anxiety in their actual teaching practices. In reference to the characteristic features of student anxiety reported in the relevant literature, this study also discusses the teachers' viewpoints in terms of whether there are any gaps or discrepancies with the students' affective needs in the language classroom. In this sense, this study can be considered as an attempt to provide some alternative insights into language anxiety from a different perspective. Similar to the interview study by Young (1992) concerning the perspectives of language specialists (Krashen, Omagio, Terrell, and Rardin) on language anxiety, this study also uses a qualitative in-depth interview format to investigate the seven experienced ESL/EFL teachers' perspectives on the phenomenon. As the interview results indicate, many of the accounts from the participants seem to generally corroborate the findings offered by previous research on language anxiety, but there are also some differences or gaps between the teachers' and students' perceptions on the role of anxiety in the L2 classroom contexts.

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