Investigating the Role of Teacher’s Gender in EFL Students’ Language Learning Anxiety The Case of First-year LMD Students of English in the Algerian University
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Date
2020
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UNIVERSITY OF ABBES LAGHROUR-KHENCHELA
Abstract
Abstract
Learning anxiety is one of the most prominent problems among EFL learners. This research aimes at investigating whether the gender of the teacher has any role into provoking EFL learners’ foreign language anxiety, for first year tertiary level students of English. By means of the quantitative correlational approach and in order to find answers for the research questions,a questionnaire was submitted online as a tool of gathering data. This latter was administered to 123 students of English from different universities nationwide during the academic year 2019-2020. The results obtained from the analyzed data reveale that learners experience foreign language anxiety regardless of their own gender or the gender of their respective teachers. That is to say, teacher’s gender has no actual role into provoking EFL learners’ language anxiety. Hence, the results obtained from the questionnaire distributed to the learners refute the hypotheses set for this research : that there is a significant role of teachers’ gender in provoking learners' language learning anxiety, and that same teacher-learner gender has a significant role in reducing EFL classroom anxiety among students.Far from it, this study shows that there are many other reasons than teachers' gender, provoking learners’ foreign language anxiety such as: shyness, fear of making mistakes, nervousness when speaking in front of the classmates, the lack of self-confidence, and fear of negative evaluation of teachers as well as their peers. All of which appear to affect the learning process,andthusleadtolowperformance.