Foreign Language Anxiety

We have consider important to reflect on the role of anxiety in foreign language teaching.

At first, it is very important to understand the concept of foreign language anxiety:

With other words:

The components of FLA are:

• Communication apprehension: the fear of communicating in the target language in front of others.
• Fear of negative evaluation: the worry about how others view the speaker.
• Test anxiety: consider oral production as a test situation.

We think that the following teacher's interventions can help to reduce this anxiety:

• Attack negatives thoughts: many anxious students actually provoke their anxiety by setting unreasonable standars for their performance.
• Students-centered lessons: teachers should take into account if an activity may be embarrassing or anxiety-provoking for students.
• Create opportunities to discuss anxiaty: it is beneficial to know that other people experience this kind of feelings.