Lowering Student Anxiety in the World Language Classroom

The World Language (WL) classroom is intended to be a place where students are challenged to grow and achieve. Many students, however, have their language- learning experience negatively impacted by elevated anxiety levels. When students are anxious, their affective filter – that is, the emotional wall that prevents them from acquiring a language – rises (Krashen, 1982). Because there is often an inverse relationship between affective filters and measures of proficiency, WL teachers should strive to create an encouraging, low-stress learning environment. Let’s look at some practical yet powerful strategies that enable us to lower student anxiety and thus support all classroom learners.

1. Encourage one another. WL, unlike other content areas, uniquely relies on student interaction in order to enhance communication skills. Social pressure, fear of making mistakes, and even perfectionistic tendencies can be stressful barriers to student output, though. Therefore, we should establish the expectation that classmates unconditionally support each other. This looks like patiently listening while others formulate responses, providing constructive feedback, and encouraging peers with affirmative nonverbals (nodding, eye contact, smiling, etc.).
2. Celebrate a variety of strengths, not just error-free language production. For example, compliment learners who successfully use circumlocution or ask great clarifying questions. Acknowledge efforts made to use a robust range of vocabulary, or students whose facial expressions, gestures and prosody enhance communication. Praising numerous actions related to classroom effort and communication gives each student limitless opportunities to thrive!
3. Ask students what benefits them. In my Get to Know You survey, I ask students how they prefer to be assisted, corrected, and encouraged, as well as what they find discouraging or detrimental to that process. Learning this enables me to customize my approach to providing feedback; as such, each student feels cared for in a setting where he/she can be poised for success.
4. Rely on a variety of partner-pairing strategies. Finding a partner is a stressful experience for some students, and repeatedly working with the same partner may stymie growth and thus reduce motivation. To combat this, try varying your partner-pairing methods so that students can meet and interact with a variety of other learners. (My other blog post contains some WL-specific partner-pairing ideas, if you are looking for inspiration.) When students work with others of varying proficiency levels, they can challenge peers while also being challenged themselves; this naturally leads to increased engagement, deeper connections and a greater sense of belonging within the classroom.
5. Transparency reduces trepidation. Student anxiety can be dramatically reduced when teachers share the scope, format, and evaluation criteria of upcoming assessments. Knowing this information builds students’ confidence as they effectively manage their study time, assured that their efforts are well aligned with assessment expectations.

To facilitate this assessment preview process, I give students a Guide to Preparing for Assessments that details all major aspects of the assessment. This guide allows students to approach the assessment with a greater sense of predictability and control, both of which are major antidotes for test anxiety. Providing a clear and thorough assessment overview means that students do not have to dread the unknown; rather, they can confidently plan for the known!

6. Embrace fluency-based tasks. Accuracy-based tasks require students to use grammatical structures correctly, and necessitate more immediate correction from the instructor. Unfortunately, this frequent correction can raise students’ anxiety, thereby stifling output.

   Fluency-based tasks, on the other hand, rely less on grammatical accuracy; instead, they prioritize a comprehensible exchange of messages. Since the goal of fluency-based tasks is an effortless communication stream rather than perfect grammar, teachers can delay or eliminate correction so as to not interrupt the conversational flow. Incorporating this freer style of communication decreases students’ fear of making errors, boosting their self-assurance and confidence.

7. Grow through mistakes. Mastering any skill takes time, practice, and a lot of failure before success! Remind students that errors are an expected, natural part of the language acquisition process. As such, students should anticipate mistakes, welcome feedback, persevere through challenges, and allow struggles to help build resiliency.
8. Activate prior knowledge to reduce anxiety. To help students establish a sense of control and ownership before beginning a task, let them activate prior knowledge through completing something like a splashdown. During role play splashdowns, for example, I first summarize the general scenario for students (e.g., You’ll be in a restaurant placing an order). I then provide one minute to individually brainstorm any known words/phrases that they believe could help them during the task. When time is up, students review their splashdown, gaining confidence when they realize that they already recall plenty of information that will enable them to succeed during our activity.
9. Let students help curate the physical space. In my classroom, I reserve a bulletin board specifically for student contributions. This includes artwork, funny memes, and – my personal favorite – photos of their pets. When students can add personal and familiar objects to the classroom environment, they develop a more positive and relaxing association with the space.

Consider incorporating some of these ideas to help cultivate a low-anxiety, supportive learning environment so that all students can grow in knowledge, skill and confidence.

Source: Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Pergamon Press. https://www.sdkrashen.com/content/books/principles_and_practice.pdf