The goal for this essay is to research the action of “I don’t know” as a problem solving strategy with antilearning consequences, and as an action, with help from Dewey’s pragmatism and Krashen’s theory about affective filters (Krashen, 1987). The data is gathered from a group of nine-graders learning German as a third language, and the language skill in focus is oral production. The main questions are: ”How does an awareness raising about affective filters affect the pupils use of the action ’I don’t know’” and ”How does teaching about strategies affect the pupils use of the action ’I don’t know’”. As I interpreted the pupils use of “I don’t know” as a bad kind of problem solving action I wanted to give them better solutions, by teaching three language learning strategies. From the results of the data collection it is clear, that affective filters at first is an abstract theme for the pupils to understand and discuss, and that a more concrete work around the effects of “I don’t” is easier to handle. The result shows that both awareness raising and teaching strategies help the students to avoid the action “I don’t know” and in the last recording of the oral exams the action is not heard at all.