Foreign Language Anxiety: University Foreign Language Teachers' Perspectives

• Main Authors: CHEN, SIOU-YI, 陳秀儀
• Other Authors: Eva, Salazar-Liu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/51441171303795582165

碩士 === 銘傳大學 === 應用英語學系碩士在職專班 === 105 === Researchers of foreign language anxiety have often suggested that both teachers’ and students’ foreign language anxiety would likely affect their teaching effectiveness as well as language learning. However, research that has empirically documented the link between foreign language anxiety and teachers influential factors is scant. Therefore, the major purpose of this study was to explore how teachers’ foreign language anxiety and gender, length of teaching experience and the language they teach are related. A total of N=72 instructors, through randomly stratified sampling, participated in the study in the fall semester, 2013. The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS, Horwitz, et.al, 1986/1990) was employed to collect the data. Then, two interview questions were taken from Yoon (2012). The quantitative analysis of the questionnaires was conducted through descriptive statistics, t test and one-way ANOVA in order to indicate the teachers’ foreign language anxiety between the three variables. Results of this study showed that the highest anxiety experienced by teachers is communication apprehension (overall X=23.36, s=10.89). Second, female instructors were likely to experience high level of anxiety than male instructors in the northern university (t= -1.849, p< .05). Third, Japanese instructors have higher level of anxiety than English instructors (F= .951, Sig= .421, p<.05 ) Fourth, comparing instructors who have been teaching from 1 year to 25 years, there were no significant differences (F=1.431, Sig=.241, p<.05) among them in the northern university. From the interview, there were common several causes of anxieties resulting in teacher’s foreign language anxiety, including extra administrative jobs, challenging in-class students’ behaviors, classroom management and promotion of academic ranking based on school policy. To conclude, this study may be of importance in explaining the dynamic relationship between teacher’s foreign language anxiety and influential factors, as well as in providing language teachers with a better understanding of how foreign language anxiety about teachers related to teaching and learning.