Researchers and teachers have long been interested in the relationship between foreign language anxiety and second language learning and have generally agreed on the negative relationship between the two. Over the last few decades, a considerable amount of research has been dedicated to examining second language learners' experiences with foreign language anxiety. However, it appears it has been forgotten that non-native student teachers are also, in essence, language learners themselves, although of a higher level of target language proficiency. Thus, affective variables such as language anxiety which have been documented to play an important role in the experiences of language learners are also relevant to the experiences of non-native student teachers. However, a review of the literature reveals that very little is known about non-native student teachers' feelings of language anxiety. This thesis argues that non-native student teachers are just as susceptible to feelings of language anxiety as are inexperienced language learners — a claim which carries important implications for not only the EFL classroom, but also non-native student teacher education. To investigate non-native student teachers' feelings of language anxiety, extensive interviews were conducted with four non-native EFL student teachers approaching the end of their second language teacher education program to investigate the potential sources and effects of such feelings. The analysis of the interview data indicates that the language anxiety experienced by these four non-native student teachers adversely affects their performance in the target language and also how they intend to teach the target language in their future classrooms. Based on the findings, the thesis also proposes steps towards helping non-native student teachers cope with, and hopefully eventually overcome their feelings of language anxiety.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:630843 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Tum, Danyal Oztas |
| Publisher | University College London (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10020017/ |
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