Abstract
Students’ high levels of foreign-language classroom anxiety (FLCA) are reported to have a negative impact on their target language performance in classrooms. There are some anxiety studies from the students' perspective in the existing literature, but few from the teachers' perspective, particularly in Japan. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate how teachers managed students' levels of anxiety, which may lead to an improvement in their communication skills. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with six teachers. Various strategies that teachers could use to decrease students’ levels of anxiety were introduced. In communicative lessons, students need to practice speaking and listening in class as much as possible to improve these skills in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context. Therefore, teachers should use various methods to increase the opportunities for students to speak a target language in class, and to create an unthreatening classroom environment in which students can speak without hesitation. In addition, teachers could use group dynamics effectively to ensure seamless classroom management.
Highlights
The teaching of English in Japan has gradually shifted to include communicative methods in communicative English as a foreign language (EFL) college lessons
Some researchers have focused on decreasing anxiety in foreign-language classrooms because the students’ performances will deteriorate if their levels of anxiety are high (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986; MacIntyre & Gardner, 1994)
EFL teachers were interviewed in this study
Summary
The teaching of English in Japan has gradually shifted to include communicative methods in communicative EFL college lessons. This approach encourages students to participate actively in the lessons, and contributes to improving their speaking and listening skills. In such lessons, performances are observed and they become concerned about their performances when they compare themselves to their classmates (Kitano, 2001). Individual interviews with six teachers were conducted, and the findings of the research and suggestions for decreasing students' levels of anxiety are presented in this paper
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