Discerning the Effective Teaching Strategies to Mitigate English Language Anxiety among EFL Learners in Oral Performance. A case study of First year BMD Students at Ibn-Khaldoun University

Abstract

Language anxiety has been proven to be one of the most important examined variables in both psychology and education. During the oral expression sessions, language anxiety is recognized as a major challenge for EFL students. Thus, the study is undertaken to learn more about anxiety and how it affects student Oral performance. It also seeks to identify probable causes behind students' speaking anxiety in order to choose the appropriate strategies, decreasing this psychological phenomenon and enhancing students' foreign language speaking abilities in EFL courses. To conduct this investigation, a sample of first-year BMD students in the English language department at Ibn-Khaldun University of Tiaret is Non-randomly selected. For the sake of validity and scientificity, a mixed method is used to collect data from samples of students and instructors, utilizing two instruments, viz., a questionnaire directed to 50 freshmen students, and a structured interview conducted with seven teachers for the academic year 2020/2021. The gleaned findings reveal that English students endure anxious moments during oral speaking sessions due to multifarious reasons, viz., fearing judgemental opinions, shyness and mistakes making, owing to the lack of self-confidence, self-esteem and thorough preparation and rehearsal. Among the strategies that may cause ELA mitigation, both students and teachers are in favour of the friendly and comfortable classroom environment.