The State of Anxiety Felt by Elementary School Pupils during Foreign Language Activities

This paper aims to investigate the state of anxiety felt by elementary school pupils while they are in foreign language activities classes. "Foreign language anxiety" is considered to have negative effects to the learners' learning and thus should be taken away. However, the foreign language anxiety has been believed to relate basically to the adult learners and few studies have been conducted which deals young learners' anxiety on foreign language learning. In this paper, about 1,500 elementary school pupils' self assessed state of anxiety was examined. The results revealed the existence of pupils who feel anxiety during the lessons and the factors such as sex, grade, and the experience of learning the foreign language outside of schools have a relation with the degree of anxiety they feel. Also, if the degree of anxiety relates with the pupils' friendly feelings and willingness toward learning the foreign language was investigated and the results showed that pupils have a fair willingness to the learning regardless of the degree of anxiety they feel