The present study aims to investigate the possible impact that extramural English (EE) has on students’ foreign language anxiety (FLA) in the Swedish EFL classroom. The focus lies specifically on speaking anxiety and its relation to EE, if certain EE activities have a greater importance than others, and if there are gender differences in EE activities and levels of speaking anxiety. The study was carried out in a secondary school in Stockholm, Sweden. The 142 participants attended the last term of ninth grade when the study was carried out. Quantitative data was collected through a questionnaire and results demonstrated that the more extramural English the participants engaged in, the lower their levels of speaking anxiety were. Results also showed that productive EE activities seemed to have a greater impact than receptive activities on FLA. Finally, the study also revealed gender differences in preferred EE activities as well as in levels of speaking anxiety. The participating girls, as a group, had higher levels of speaking anxiety than the boys and were more involved in receptive EE activities than the participating boys. Additionally, the boys spent more time on activities involving video games than girls.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:du-37728 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Sandberg, Helene |
| Publisher | Högskolan Dalarna, Institutionen för språk, litteratur och lärande |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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