The Impact of Foreign Language Anxiety among English foreign Language learners’ Speaking Skill

Abstract

The present study aims at describing and investigating the impact of foreign language anxiety on learners’ speaking skill. It used a mixed research method a questionnaire for first – year students’ of English at the department of foreign languages in Biskra University with the collaboration of fifty four students in the academic year 2012/2013. In order to reach our objectives two hypotheses were formed in order to be verified after wards our main questions was what makes students feel anxious ? For this reason we have formulate a hypotheses. We do agree that students of English 1st year LMD at Biskra University are aware of their difficulties in the mastery of speaking English as a foreign language. Next wether teachers of English work to reduce anxiety in their classes, they would reach an interactive oral expression. In order to test our hypotheses and to answer our questions we have chosen the participants have been selected at random and semi-structured interview with teachers from our field of study. The findings that have been reached suggested that foreign language anxiety can originate from: communicative apprehension; fear of negative evaluation; fear of failing in language tests. The students’ lack of self- confidence let them fear of peers in particular , they also believe that teachers ‘ questions and error correction in the classroom are the main sources of anxiety . Furthermore, there are other factors that cause foreign language anxiety; the socio-cultural factors such as, age, gender and social settings. Finally, in an attempt to find some solutions, we propose some strategies in order to help teachers’ in order create a relaxed atmosphere, then, students’ to have a high self –confidence and a positive attitude about learning to speak the foreign languages easily and also we focus on other points which are the surrounding environment parents and further classmates in order to reduce classroom anxiety. From the results above we can conclude that the teacher has a significant role in reducing students’ anxiety; however, students’ also are responsible for their success, and have to manage their fear and control their behaviour.