Investigating the EFL Anxiety Effect in Web-Assisted Iranian Teaching Setting

Mohammad R. Sadeghi

Abstract


This study compares the impact of web-assisted teaching settings and traditional teaching settings on students’ foreign language classroom anxiety. Two classes of students (N=50 for each class) from an English course in a higher vocational college in Iran were involved in the study. One class was taught in web-assisted contexts; the other in traditional contexts. A number of studies revealed that foreign language classroom anxiety scale was used as an instrument to measure students’ anxiety level in different teaching contexts. Statistical analysis showed that after the treatment, students’ foreign language classroom anxiety has decreased significantly in web-assisted teaching contexts, but remained stable in traditional teaching contexts. In addition, unlike students in traditional teaching contexts, students in web-assisted ones did not exhibit a negative relationship between their English proficiency and their foreign language classroom anxiety. Instead, students with lower level of English proficiency displayed the lowest level of anxiety while students with intermediate level yielded the highest level of anxiety. According to the post-treatment survey, this study this study suggests the major reasons for such phenomenon may lie in students’ inabilities to adapt to new environment and lack of learning strategies for autonomous learning.

Keywords


Iranian Web-assisted Teaching, English Proficiency, Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety, Higher Vocational College Students

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