영어 학습자들의 학교급간 및 불안감이 의사소통전략과 과업선호도에 미치는 영향

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of Korean EFL learners’ foreign language anxiety and school year on their communication strategies and task preferences. To this end, a total of 292 students, consisting of 159 elementary school fourth graders and 153 middle school first graders, were asked to answer three questionnaires designed to gap into learners’ language anxiety, communication strategies, and task preferences. The results of this study are as follows. First, the learners’ school year had different effects on two types of communication strategy use, i.e., reduction and achievement strategy use. Specifically, the frequency of communication strategy use was shown to differ between the elementary school students and middle school students, while the middle school students reported statistically more frequent uses of achievement strategies than the elementary school students. In a similar way, the learners’ school year had significant effects on the learners’ task preferences. The results showed that the elementary school students showed higher level of preferences to all the types of the speaking tasks. Second, the learners’ language anxiety had facilitating effects on the use of communication strategies, but negative effects on their task preferences. Specifically, the group with the highest level of language anxiety reported more frequent use of reduction strategies and achievement strategies, whereas the groups with the lowest level of language anxiety showed higher preferences to all the types of speaking tasks than the other groups. These findings may lead to the following pedagogical suggestions. Firstly, teachers should demonstrate patience with the students’ speaking anxiety and understand their difficulties in learning a foreign language. Secondly, it is anticipated that students with low anxiety of speaking can develop a high level of interest due to their speaking task preferences. So, teachers create practical and relevant tasks for students, the students are more likely to enjoy the class, thus reducing their speaking anxiety and increasing their task efficiency.