| Summary: | 碩士 === 南台科技大學 === 應用英語系 === 99 === The purposes of this study are (a) to discuss the relationship between the students’ foreign language learning anxiety and in-class activities; and (b) to explore what kinds of instructors’ characteristics would increase or decrease students’ learning anxiety. The researcher also makes some suggestions for improving the teaching and learning atmosphere for teachers and students based on the findings of the study.
The researcher of this study adopted the questionnaire of Anxiety Toward In-Class Activities Questionnaire (ATIAQ) to 268 EFL students in St. Mary’s Medicine Nursing and Management College in 2009. The collected data were computed with SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Science) 12.0 program. The findings of this study were illustrated by a descriptive statistics (i.e., means, standard deviations, frequencies, and percentages). In addition, the researcher also interviewed two teachers and twelve students for qualitative research.
The results of this study indicated that oral-oriented in-class activities are major sources for students’ foreign language anxiety. Instructors with the characteristics like being friendly, relaxed, patient, kind and humorous could help students reduce their language anxiety. On the contrary, instructors with strict, cold, indifferent personalities and with a tendency to threaten, fail and humiliate students would increase students’ language learning anxiety. Some group-based activities like role-playing, singing songs, discussing in groups, making a conversation with classmates, etc. could reduce students’ language anxiety. Also, instructors should adjust themselves to help learners to reduce foreign language anxiety in the classroom in order to let learners learn English more effectively.
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