Teachers’ and students’ beliefs about foreign language anxiety

Abstract: The aim and purpose of this essay was to investigate if the students of the chosen school, experience foreign language anxiety. Then the answers from the students was used to investigate what teachers’ beliefs was concerning this issue of foreign language anxiety. At the same time this study investigated whether teachers know the difference between general anxiety and foreign language anxiety, and if they are aware of that there is a term called foreign language anxiety. The material for this study that was used, was an upper secondary school in Sweden, which teaches English 5 and English 6. There were 50 students participating to answer a questionnaire. Then there were two teachers being interviewed for the teachers’ point of view on this issue. The way of collecting the information from the students was done by sending out a link to a survey site to the teachers of the students, who then proceeded this link to the students. The answers from the teachers were collected by semi-structured interviews. The major findings of this study was that teachers have a difficulty to distinguish between general anxiety and foreign language anxiety. It was also clearly shown that the students were suffering from foreign language anxiety, there was no majority, but a few students.