Abstract
The current study aimed at investigating the possible effects of explicit teaching of affective strategies on Iranian EFL learners’ oral language proficiency and the extent of their anxiety in EFL classroom. First, PET test was administered to a total number of 120 female third grade high school EFL students. Then, 60 participants whose score fell within the range of + 1 SD from the mean score were selected for the main study. Next, they were randomly assigned into two groups (one control and one experimental). The design of the study was Experimental comparison-group plan. Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale adopted from Horwitz (1986) was used to examine the EFL learners’ anxiety level in English class. Moreover, two equivalent oral tests adopted from Heaton (1975) were administered to the participants of the two groups both at the beginning and at the end of the study served as pre and post-tests. The treatment for the experimental group included Oxford's (1990) taxonomy of affective strategies, which included explicit affective strategy instruction (in relaxation, music, visualization, humor, positive self-talk, risk-taking, and monitoring emotions). The control group did not receive any special instruction in terms of affective strategies. To investigate the possible effects of explicit affective strategy use instruction on the participants’ oral language proficiency and their anxiety level, the pre and posttests of oral tests and the participants’ self-reports of anxiety control in both groups were analyzed and compared. The results of independent samples T- test indicated that while the two groups were homogeneous in terms of oral proficiency and level of anxiety control before introducing the treatment, the experimental group performed better than the control group in the oral post-test. Moreover, the level of anxiety control for the experimental group was significantly different and higher than that of the control group. The results confirm the positive effects of affective strategy instruction on oral language proficiency. The findings of this study provide a greater understanding of affective strategy use among Iranian EFL learners. This study might also have some implications for material developers to consider strategy use in materials development. Keywords: affective strategies, explicit strategy training, language anxiety
Highlights
In the last three decades, the field of second/foreign language teaching and learning has focused mainly on learners’ individual factors
Oxford believes that in language learning, affective strategies help learners gain control over their emotions, attitudes, and motivations (Oxford, 1990). The participants in both experimental and control groups participated in the oral proficiency post-test and completed the questionnaire to determine the effectiveness of explicit affective strategy training on their oral proficiency and anxiety reduction
The results indicate that explicit affective strategy training had been effective in improving students’ oral language proficiency score in the experimental group and the first null hypothesis is rejected
Summary
In the last three decades, the field of second/foreign language teaching and learning has focused mainly on learners’ individual factors. In this study, speaking skill was selected and Oxford’s SILL was used as the key instrument for collecting the relevant data Another important issue, which is directly related to learners’ language learning, is affective strategies. It includes self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to learning that results from the uniqueness of the language learning process This complex concept has four components (Horwitz and Cope, 1986; Zheng, 2008) including communication anxiety, test anxiety, negative evaluation anxiety, and anxiety in the English classroom. Anxiety in the English classroom which is the learners' concern in the classroom situation where some influential factors such as learning tasks and activities, teachers' engagement may cause language learning anxiety (Horwitz, et al 1986; Brown, 2007;Zheng, 2008). The combination of these parts led to the anxiety in language learners (Brown, 2007; Zheng, 2008)
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