Dealing with foreign language speaking anxiety: What every language teacher should know

The issue of language learning anxiety has received considerable attention in the last decades due to interest in learner psychology. Foreign language anxiety has been investigated as situation-specific anxiety related to the language classroom. Lately, researchers focused on language anxiety from a skills perspective, mainly the productive ones, speaking and writing, exploring the debilitating effects of anxiety on language learners. This paper reports on a study on speaking anxiety that included a sample of sixteen EFL undergraduates who took part in focus group interviews. They were conducted to collect qualitative data that would shed light on speaking anxiety from students’ perspectives. Based on existing language anxiety research, a theoretical overview of some of the personal and procedural factors that are thought to contribute to foreign language speaking anxiety is provided. The findings revealed a significant impact of the teachers’ role (s) in alleviating much of the anxiety experienced by the subjects in EFL speaking. An essential aim of this paper was to suggest some possible pedagogical measures that would help learners, as well as teachers, overcome major difficulties caused by foreign language speaking anxiety in an EFL university setting with reference to the teaching and learning of the speaking skill in the EFL Algerian university context. Ways to deal with and minimise foreign language speaking anxiety could be more effective if they intersect with students’ concerns.