The study of foreign language anxiety in oral testing: a case study of second year English students in Mohamed Kheider University

Abstract

The English language today, due to globalization-related and many other reasons, has acquired a significant importance in the world. In this study, we explore the individual differences which influence and take charge of the fluency of the process of foreign language learning. Among those variables is language anxiety. In this study we explore anxiety and what it signifies in psychology and more specifically in language learning. At the beginning of this study, we inquired about the performance of the English students during oral tests. We hypothesized that their low achievement could be related to a high level of anxiety they suffer from when being tested in the oral skill. We explored the fractions of the literature which we thought they served obtaining a better understanding of our topic. We started by defining anxiety on the level of psychology, pointing out to types, symptoms and sources of anxiety in general. Then, we went a little bit deeper to investigate anxiety within the context of foreign language learning; referring to the definitions, the main sources and tools of measuring language anxiety. Finally, we concentrated the scope of study on the relation of language anxiety with the four skills, namely, the speaking skill. At this point, we tackled testing language students in oral classes; how it is done and how to prepare the students for oral tests. For the purpose of studying language anxiety among English students in Mohamed Khider University, we conducted a research on a sample of 54 2nd year students and 9 oral expression teachers in the same university. We designed a questionnaire for the sample of students, and an interview for that of the teachers along with several sessions of classroom observation in order to study the phenomenon of language anxiety in oral classes. The collected data from the empirical study is analyzed to reach the conclusion that English students do suffer from language anxiety in oral classes and it is one of the reasons behind the underachievement of the students. Hence, some pedagogical suggestions and recommendations are proposed as a solution to minimize this problem.