An Investigation of Elementary School Teachers' Anxieties in Foreign Language Activities
214M1019 N. T.
The purpose of this study is to investigate anxieties that elementary teacher in Japan have, to analyze them, and to consider what is the best way for teaching English in elementary school. In response to the growing need for English competence in EFL contexts, a lot of East Asian countries have been required to make changes in their language education policies. Currently, in Japan there is a looming change about Foreign Language Activities. In 2020, The Japanese government will introduce a new subject 'English' as well as Japanese, mathematics, science, and social studies to the 5th and 6th grades in elementary school. This change has a possibility which makes elementary school teachers feel anxious because most of them are not specialized in English teaching.
In Chapter 1, I discussed the background of research into language anxiety, advantages and disadvantages of the native English Speaking Teachers (NESTs) and the non-native English Speaking Teachers (NNESTs), surveying their characteristics and the theories behind them. I went on to compare NESTs and NNESTs in elementary school in Japan.
In Chapter 2, I discussed the previous research of Foreign Language Activities (FLAs), studying its characteristics, and the real situations in elementary school in Japan.
In Chapter 3, I described how the surveys were conducted. In order to explore the anxieties of elementary school teachers in Japan, I conducted two surveys. One is the pilot study and the other is questionnaire survey based on the previous one.
In Chapter 4, I analyzed the data obtained from the result of questionnaire investigation. Lastly I gave some suggestions and discussed the implications of the study in order to decrease elementary school teachers' anxieties in having FLAs for future research.
To sum up, elementary school teachers have some anxieties in FLAs. What is important is that they need to be aware that not only elementary school teachers but also junior high school English teachers and high school English teachers can have foreign language anxiety. It is because English is definitely a foreign language for Japanese regardless of their majors. Most elementary school teachers are likely to feel that they are not professional teachers of English, so they naturally feel anxious about it. Today, junior and senior high school English teachers are under the pressure of teaching English through English by the Government policy. It is sure that not all the teachers are perfectly confident in their English proficiency. As seen in the study of literature, foreign language anxiety is common in learning a foreign language; however, if it comes to teaching it, it can be easily imagined how huge it is as a NNEST. Therefore, it is taken for granted that elementary school teachers cannot avoid it and they should learn that they are not alone in becoming uneasy.
But elementary school teachers can try to decrease their anxieties by all kinds of methods as well as their dependence on ALTs. So we should think of the way that promotes this movement of teachers, such as, conducting desired teachers training, creating a tool for having efficient meetings about the management of FLAs class between HRTs and ALTs, and encouraging elementary school teachers to have confidence in English proficiency by accepting foreign language anxiety as a natural thing.