Students’ fears, students’ self-confidence

Are teachers conscious about students’ fears speaking in a second language? How could teachers promote self-confidence in second language students’ participation?

Key words:

Students’ fears, students’ self-confidence

These questions came from my own experience. When I was in high school, it was very difficult to me participating actively in class, even when I had the answers to teachers’ questions or when I had prepared my oral presentations. At the moment of being stood in front of the classroom, all kind of sensations took possession of me because of the nervousness or the high level of anxiety: sweat, shaking, change in voice, absence of air and blushing. Spielberger (1983) “defines anxiety as the subjective feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness and worry associated with the arousal of the nervous system” (as cited by Mahmoodzadeh, 2012). That definition could explain all those changes inside my organism before performing an oral participation. The anxiety could be associated to ordinary situations in someone’s life; however in second language acquisition is very common to find students refusing to participate because nervousness. Young (1992) describes that particularly anxiety as follows:

“Speaking can cause high anxiety level and the reason for this is that teachers often expect beginners to perform beyond their acquire competence. In early stages, the teacher force learners to break the silent period before they are ready and they have to use aspects of language that they have not yet subconsciously acquired. As a result, learners will show poor speaking performance because they are not competent in using the target language” (as cited by Abdullah and Rahman, 2010).

Analyzing the precedent paragraph, it is possible to affirm that the teacher described is not conscious about students’ fears and the teaching goal is just promoting speaking. It is not difficult to find that situation in our context; I have met teachers forcing students’ participation before encouraging students’ self-confidence. On the other hand, there are other teachers conscious about students’ emotions who have demonstrated that self-confidence in students can be promoted. When a teacher is interested in knowing the students and creating a good environment in classroom before forcing speaking, students are more prepared to participate. In other words, it is necessary breaking the ice before.

Concluding, I think that it is important for a second language teacher, first at all identify nervous students and help them to break the ice. So, I agree with Aida (1994) who established that “they (teachers) should identify anxious learners and make interventions to help them overcome foreign language anxiety” (as cited Tsiplakides, 2009). Also, it is important “a supportive classroom atmosphere, in which language errors are considered as natural in the process of language acquisition” (Tsiplakides, 2009).  Finally, I agree with Tsiplakides who affirms that:

“Before employing strategies to help students overcome foreign language speaking anxiety, foster motivation, and increase foreign language performance, practitioners should get to know their students, their attitudes toward oral production, and to shed light into the reasons that underlie their low performance and their unwillingness to engage in speaking activities”.

References

-       Mahmoodzadeh, 2012. Investigating Foreign Language Speaking Anxiety within the EFL Learner's Interlanguage System: The Case of Iranian Learners.  Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 466-476.

-       Abdullah, Khairi Izwan and Abdul Rahman, Nurul Lina (2010) A Study On Second Language Speaking Anxiety Among UTM Students. pp. 1-6. (Unpublished)        

-       Tsiplakides, 2009. Helping Students Overcome Foreign Language Speaking Anxiety in the English Classroom: Theoretical Issues and Practical Recommendations. International Education Studies. Pp. 39-44