Proceedings of The World Conference on Education and Teaching
Year: 2021
DOI:
Overcoming Speaking Anxiety in the EFL Classroom
Darja Pipuš
ABSTRACT:
The article Overcoming Speaking Anxiety in the EFL Classroom is a brief overview of scientific articles and literature that explore speaking and performance anxiety that adults as well as children frequently experience. It explores the incidence of anxiety in adults and children, defines what it is and how to cope with it. The article states that both performance anxiety is common in adults and children, as well as foreign language anxiety. The author has also found that performance anxiety can have a negative and both positive effect on performance, that anxiety can lead to low self-esteem in children, which can in turn lead to even greater anxiety. The article also presents ways on dealing with speaking anxiety, managing it in EFL and the primary role of the teacher in speaking anxiety management. The article is in terms of methodology theoretical in nature and uses the descriptive research method as it describes previous findings on the topic and comparative research method when comparing professional and scientific findings of different authors. The article also describes personal experience of the author in dealing with speaking anxiety in the classroom in over 20 years of teaching English.
Keywords: performance anxiety, speaking, children, EFL.