TEACHER FACTOR ON ANXIETY LEVEL OF UNIVERSITY PREPARATORY SCHOOL LEARNERS’ SPEAKING

Abstract

Anxiety, which is seen as a barrier in the language learning process by many teachers and researchers, prevents the learners from learning effectively. Also, determining the impacts of negative feelings on the language learning process is quite important for teachers since these feelings may be a mental block for the learners by preventing them from using comprehensible input, they get. Although there are numerous studies on the impact of anxiety level in language classrooms and on the reasons that might cause anxiety, there are relatively fewer studies on teachers’ impact on anxiety level of learners’ speaking. Also, foreign language classroom anxiety has been studied deeply, yet speaking anxiety and its reasons related to foreign language teachers were not mentioned sufficiently. Therefore, this study aims to explore the role of the teachers on the anxiety level of university preparatory school learners’ speaking skill. For this study, a quantitative research design with the help of an online questionnaire, which was administered to the university preparatory learners studying at a state university based in Ankara, was used. 226 participants from different age ranges and academic majors participated in the study. Based on the data analysis, the research presented here showed how teachers can increase or decrease the anxiety level of foreign language learners especially while they are speaking the target language. The results show that there is a strong relationship between teacher and learners’ speaking anxiety. Depending on the rapport between learners and teachers, the level of different feelings in the classroom has been changing. Furthermore, female, and male learners differ in terms of their anxiety level while speaking English. However, there is not a significant difference between the anxiety level of learners and their age or academic majors. Based on this, the findings can contribute to a better learning environment with lower affective filters by revealing the relationship between teacher and learners’ anxiety level.