Socio-affective strategies for reducing foreign language anxiety levels in university students

Abstract

The main objective of the research is to analyse the impact it has on the use of socio-affective strategies employed by university students to gain confidence and reduce foreign language anxiety when performing monologues. The participants of the study were students of Basic English at a language centre from a southeast Mexican university. The following investigation has a quantitative focus the online questionnaire technique was applied and employed a Likert scale, qualitative with the implementation of students’ diaries and semi-structured interview. The methodological design adopted an action research approach. It was divided in four stages planning the intervention of the problematic situation in the classroom, Action the intervention by applying socio-affective strategies and monologues, observe the changes done by the critical intervention and reflect about the results of the whole process. The outcomes were that English Basic students reduced their levels of Foreign Language Anxiety.