A novice teacher's action research on EFL learners’ speaking anxiety

The purpose of this paper is to share the findings of an action research which aims at helping students to overcome anxiety problem they suffer while speaking in speaking-listening course. The first step was identification of the problem and for this purpose an open-ended questionnaire was given to all of the students in that class. Following this, interviews were conducted with eight students, six of whom were highly anxious and two of them were not anxious according to their answers to the questionnaire. After identifying the causes of their anxiety most of which were related with fear of failure as a result of poor performance, an action plan was developed and implemented. In this presentation, both this action research process and its role in the researcher's professional development will be shared.