A study on speaking anxiety in the ESL classroom

This research investigates which factors of speaking anxiety most commonly affects the ESL learner and how teachers can work with ESL learners´ speaking anxiety. The study is twofold: it examines which main factors contribute to ESL learner speaking anxiety (literature review of empirical research), and how ESL teachers can work with students´ speaking anxiety (semi-structured interviews). The literature review is an analysis of literature gathered from various search engines and the tailing method. The review is based on eight empirical studies from the years 2013-2020. The semi-structured interviews were conducted with two Norwegian ESL teachers. The literature review revealed four reasons ESL learners may have speaking anxiety: lack of linguistic knowledge, feelings of self-worth and self-esteem, social demands from peers and pedagogical factors. Through the semi-structured interviews, three topics were identified as ways teachers can help their students with speaking anxiety in the ESL classroom: classroom environment, adaptation and creativity, and authentic tasks. The main finding of this study was that the teachers focused primarily on the pedagogical implications of language learning, and not the psychological factors, which is in contrast to the findings from the literature review. This might suggest that teacher education should focus more on the psychological factors affecting their students´ language learning. This study would then suggest an evaluation of the importance of students´ affective factors in teacher education and argue its importance for effective language learning