An investigation into the factors that hinder the participation of the second year English major students in English speaking lessons at Thuong Mai University

This research is implemented to investigate the factors that hinder students’ participation in speaking activities at Thuong Mai University. The research’s objects are the teachers and the second-year English-major students of English from Thuong Mai University.

1 INTRODUCTION

After Vietnam joined WTO, the need to enhance

English language teaching and learning has become

one of the most important aims of the universities

in Vietnam With the Higher Education Reform

Agenda (HERA), formulating a strategy on

international integration, raising the cooperation

capacity and competitiveness of Vietnamese

tertiary education is the aim of Vietnam In order to

do this, first and foremost, universities in the system

have to organize teaching and learning in foreign

languages, especially English for the immediate

TRAN LAN HUONG *

* Thuong Mai University,  tranlanhuong17@gmail.com

Received:15/11/2018; Revised: 10/4/2019; Accepted: 28/4/2019

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE FACTORS

THAT HINDER THE PARTICIPATION

OF THE SECOND-YEAR ENGLISH-MAJOR

STUDENTS IN ENGLISH SPEAKING LESSONS

AT THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY

ABSTRACT

This research is implemented to investigate the factors that hinder students’ participation in speaking activities at Thuong Mai University The research’s objects are the teachers and the second-year English-major students of English from Thuong Mai University To attain the aim

of the research, the questionnaires and interview were used as instruments to take data from 10 lecturers and 175 students The revealed factors included affective-related problems, socially related problems, instructor- related problems, educational system and facility-related problem and linguistic-related problems Of which, linguistic-related problems have the most effective factor on students’ participation in speaking activities while instructor–related problems have the smallest impact on students’ participation in speaking activities In addition, some suggestions are

made with the hope for better methods to help the teachers reduce their students’ negative effect

of these factors during the process of learning speaking English

Keywords: hinder, speaking, factors, English

futures University students are expected to be able

to understand and communicate well in English However, there is also a popular claim among researchers and employers about the weak English speaking of the majority university graduates (Nunan, 2003; Stephen 2005; Stevens, 2005; Tran Ngoc Ca, 2006) The English proficiency of the majority of university students and graduates makes them not appear to be confident with their English Many of them cannot communicate in a simple English interaction

In view of this argument, proper attention needs

to be given to factors affecting the acquisition of

speaking skills in English among learners at the

university level The essence of this research was,

therefore, to investigate the various factors affecting

students’ participation in speaking activities in

the English class at the university in Vietnam

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Nature of speaking

The nature of speaking has been analyzed a lot by

many linguists According to Byrne (1976, p.8),

“speaking is a two-way process between speakers

and listeners involving the productive skills of

understanding” After that, he gave a diagram in

1995 of a speech situation:

In 2003, in Language Teaching Methodology:

A text book for teachers, Nunan noted there are two

important factors in a speech situation including

fluency and accuracy He showed that “accuracy

is the extent to which students’ speech matches

what people actually say when they use the target

language, fluency is the extent to which speakers

use the language quickly and confidently” (p.47)

2.2 Characteristics of a Successful Speaking

Activity

Students’ participation in speaking can be seen

in learners’ verbal responses to tasks, their

concentration, or through their contributions

to classroom discourse It is thought that more

language learning can be achieved in second language classrooms in which there is negotiated interaction between students and teachers, because

it produces the linguistic conditions for classroom learners to access comprehensible input and produce comprehensible output According to Ellis (1993, p.8) comprehensible input is one of the most important ways in which learners obtain new information about the language, and the teacher may be the only really competent English speaker available to provide comprehensible input About comprehensible output, Swain’s (1985) claimed that in order to acquire a language successfully, the learners must not only be given opportunities

to produce the language but they must also be pushed into making their meaning clear

Speaking activities in class can be considered

as successful can improve students’ speaking skills a lot Ur (1996, p.120) identified four factors contributing to a successful speaking activity

First, the quantity of students’ talk: Most of time in the speaking lesson has to be dominated by students, not teachers

Secondly, even participation: All students have

to speak out and give ideas on discussion, not just

a minority of talkative participants

Thirdly, high motivation: The lesson has to

be interesting enough to attract students to join speaking activities Students are eager or excited

to speak and really want to express their feelings as well as opinions in order to contribute to achieving

a task objective

Finally, accuracy: Students express themselves in utterances that are relevant, easily comprehensible to each other, and an acceptable level of language accuracy

In short, if we want to have a successful speaking activity or if we want to get students talking, we need to meet all the above criteria

2.3 Factors hinder students’ confidence of

participation in speaking activities

Bearing the above-mentioned factors affecting

speaking skills in mind, some studies have been

conducted to find out the main factors thwarting

EFL students’ speaking participation in classes

The findings of the bulk of studies investigated

on the topic (e.g Bardovi-Harlig & Griffin, 2005;

Derwing & Rossiter, 2002; Gregersen & Horwitz,

2009; Liu, 2006) resulted that EFL students might

encounter psychologically- related,

linguistically-related, or socio-pragmatically-related problems

lying in the way of the development of their speaking

participation Regarding linguistic problems that

students might encounter, Derwing and Rossiter

(2002) demonstrated that EFL learners were not

confident in their pronunciation Concerning

language learners’ pragmatic knowledge,

Bardovi-Harlig and Griffin’s (2005) research on 43

high-intermediate students identified that although

students acquired some pragmatic knowledge,

their speech acts were different a lot from the

native speakers With respect to

psychologically-related speaking problems, Liu (2006) found that

anxiety is a definitely popular among Chinese

students at all levels of language proficiency while

speaking in English, but the more proficient they

were, the less anxiety they experienced

Senel (2012) conducted a study on 32 Turkish

students to investigate why they hesitated to take

part in speaking activities in class The results of the

study revealed that there were some factors such

as instructors’ interruption and error correction,

lack of native instructors, instructors’ methods

and techniques of teaching, insufficient number of

English courses and their inadequate content, and

insufficient use of English outside the classroom

hindered their progress in oral communication

skills A study on speaking skills problems of 566

Jordanian EFL students by Aljamal and Aljamal

(2014) also corroborated Senel’s (2012) findings

to a great extent The findings of their study

indicated that the principal problems Jordanian

EFL students encountered in the way of developing their speaking skills were excessive use of the first language, overcrowded classes and lack of sufficient time to practice speaking

As the literature illustrates, a multitude of factors in EFL contexts can imped students’ participation in speaking activities Therefore, the first step in solving the problems is to identify the problems preventing EFL students from taking part in speaking activities

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction of the English Faculty of Thuong Mai University

The English Faculty of Thuong Mai University was founded in 2007 There are 40 teachers of English whose ages range from 29 to 40 All of them graduated from the English Department- The College of Foreign Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University 39 of them have got Master of Linguistics and TESOL Thuong Mai University is not the university which focuses on foreign language studies The students’ academic results at entrance examination are pre-intermediate The levels of English proficiency of the students of English faculty at Thuong Mai University are generally different Most of the students come from rural areas with a little chance for speaking English As a result, when they enter university, it is quite difficult for them to become confident in speaking English as expected

3.2 The Syllabus and Materials for Speaking skills

At Thuong Mai University, English majors have to study four skills in four years Speaking syllabus is designed to help students develop English-speaking skill both accuracy and fluency By the end of the course, the students would be able to communicate effectively in job-related situations and daily life,

as well as establish, and maintain relationships

with members of the target community They will

be able to present their ideas about personal and

social issues in English The main topics include

society, economics, education, healthy, money and

technology

Teaching and learning speaking skills, a

compulsory subject of that program, is integrated

with that of other skills in one textbook, The

Business Intermediate, which is taught in four

courses in four semesters and accounts for 8 credits

It means that there is no separated speaking skill

textbook or syllabus for English-majored students

The book is laid out with plenty of authentic models

of spoken language, and communicative activities

to help students practice using the language in the

classroom Most importantly, there are many

pair-work and group-pair-work activities in the book The

testing-assessment includes speaking assessment

by class participation during the course of study

and a presentation score without a final oral test

In term of methodology, teachers usually use

the communicative method of teaching Moreover,

students often play the key role in the lesson, being

the main speakers Teacher only acts as an advisor

during communication activities

3.3 The objects

Teachers: They are 10 Vietnamese females aged

from 28 to 50 Most of them are regarded as

experienced teachers with at least 7 teaching years

All of them have got Master Degree in teaching

English Thus, they can be representatives for the

foreign language teaching staff in Thuong Mai

University

Students: 175 second-year-students from

the faculty of English in Thuong Mai University

responded to the questionnaires These students

passed the National Enrollment Examination and

most students took the entrance examination in

English in 2017 Their levels varying from lower

pre-intermediate to pre-intermediate are proven by the fact that they have studied English for at least 3 years at high school and one year in the university

as well as the results of their first year in university The average size of their class varies from 30 to 40 students “The Business- Intermediate” is used as their textbooks

3.4 Data collection instruments

Questionnaire

The factor analysis revealed included affective-related problems, socially-related, instructor- related problems, educational system and facility-related problem and linguistically- related problems

The questionnaire (both instructors’ and students’ versions) involves 35 speaking problems All the statements of which were oriented on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree)

to 5 (strongly agree) To ensure the validity and reliability of the questionnaire, the following steps were taken:

1 Before the study began, 20 second-year students and ten instructors sat a semi-structured interview The questions of the semi-structured interview were utilized after they were approved

by two experts in the field The reason behind this was to make sure that all the problems which students and their English instructors might face in speaking classes were included in the questionnaire, the main items of which were to be drawn from the interviews

2 The questionnaire hence constructed was piloted with 73 students To further ensure the validity of the questionnaire, exploratory factor analysis was run Since the results of the factor analyses indicated that some of the items correlated poorly with others, nine of the items with low anti-image correlation were omitted from the 41-item speaking skills problems questionnaire and three

new items were added (i.e My instructors do not

teach us how to express appropriate speech acts;

My instructors do not tell us what to do when we

cannot find the correct and appropriate word,

structure and sentence during our speaking;

and there is no cooperation spirit among my

classmates in my speaking classes) were added

Thus, the questionnaire was finally based on 35

items Then, it was validated and factor analyzed

for the second time with 175 students, and the

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling

adequacy and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity were

calculated, the results of which are summarized

in the following table which shows an acceptable

KMO index (0.58)

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy .580

Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity Approx Chi-Square 218.342

Df 153 Sig .000

3 The reliability of the questionnaire was also

calculated using Cronbach’s Alpha, which shows

that the questionnaire possessed an acceptable

internal consistency (α = 0.72)

Semi-structured interview

To maximize the validity of the data, to make

the findings more generalizable and to have a more

in-depth analysis of the participants’ speaking

skills problems, the data collection procedure

was triangulated That is, 30 students and ten

instructors, selected from among the participants

of the study based on stratified random sampling,

also sat a semi-structured interview in addition to

filling out the questionnaire

3.5 Data analysis

Quantitative analysis

Descriptive statistics (means and standard

deviations) was applied to address the first research

questions Then to see if there is any statistically

significant influence of the five factors on speaking

skill problems, a one-way ANOVA was employed

Qualitative analysis

The participants’ responses to the interview questions were audio-recorded and transcribed Then, the common patterns and recurring themes

of the responses were identified, coded, using SPSS20 and were subjected to frequency analysis Finally, both the qualitative and quantitative results

of the study were analyzed and discussed

4 FINDINGS

Factors that hinder students’ participation in speaking activities

- Linguistically-related problems: LRP

- Educational system and facility-related problems: ERP

- Affective-related problems: ARP

- Socially-related problems: SRP

- Instructor–related problems: IRP

Model Summary b

Square Adjusted R Square Std Error of the Estimate Watson

a Predictors: (Constant), LRP, ARP, SRP, IRP, ERP

b Dependent Variable: SS

 5 variables LRP, ARP, SRP, IRP, ERP affect 72.9% of students’ speaking ability; 27.1% due to random errors and other factors

ANOVA a

Squares df SquareMean F Sig. 1

Regression 45.319 5 9.660 43.669 000 b

Residual 20.796 171 083 Total 62.115 173

a Dependent Variable: SS

b Predictors: (Constant), LRP, ARP, SRP, IRP, ERP

 Significance F is 0.00 <0.05, so the linear regression model is consistent with the data set and can be used

Coefficients a

Coefficients Standardized Coefficients t Sig. Collinearity Statistics

1

ARP 268 026 369 10.162 000 950 1.053

SRP 224 025 323 8.960 000 960 1.041

IRP 052 024 079 2.169 031 953 1.050

ERP 252 027 370 9.293 000 787 1.271

LRP 264 026 394 10.056 000 815 1.228

a Dependent Variable: SS

Sig tests the regression coefficients of the

independent variables are less than 0.05, so these

independent variables are meant to explain the

dependent variable, no variables are excluded

from the model

The VIF coefficients of the independent

variables are less than 2 so there is no

multi-collinearity

All regression coefficients are greater than

zero Thus, all the independent variables included

in the regression analysis all work in the same

direction on the dependent variable Based on

the magnitude of the standardized regression

coefficient Beta, the order of magnitude of the

strongest and weakest effects of the independent

variables on the dependent variable HL is: LRP

(0.394) > ERP (0.370) > ARP (0.369) > SRP

(0.323)> IRP (0.079) Corresponding to:

Linguistically-related problems have the

greatest impact on students’ participation in

speaking activities

Educational system and facility-related

problems have the second highest impact on

students’ participation in speaking activities

Affective-related problems have the third

highest impact on students’ participation in

speaking activities

Socially-related problems have the fourth greatest impact to students’ participation in

speaking activities

Instructor–related problems have the weakest impact on students’ participation in speaking

activities

5 DISCUSSION 5.1 Affective-related problems

The first factor commonly shared by most students was “being afraid of making mistakes”

Figure 1: Students’ fear of making mistakes in class

The above chart shows that 70% students feel afraid of making mistakes when they have to speak English in front of the class while only 10% has no fear of this The fear of being wrong is so great that students would rather not answer questions

at all than answer them incorrectly According to the interview with the students who feel shy and unconfident, most of them answered that they were afraid of making mistakes and losing face before other students and they didn’t have the habit of speaking English in class because they used to focus entirely on grammar and written tests during their secondary and high school This resulted in their low level of participation in speaking activities Nevertheless, being afraid of making mistakes and anxiety which are two of the speaking skill

problems reported by the majority of the EFL

students is in contrast with what the majority

of the instructors reported The bulk of the EFL

instructors didn’t believe that the fear of making

mistakes which the EFL students reported as their

most-impeding psychological problem in speaking

classes is among the most troublemaking factors

which prevented students from making progress

in speaking It seems that the EFL instructors

either are not aware of their students’ worry When

answering the researcher’s questions, one teacher

said that she didn’t believe that it was the students’

problem because she always emphasized that the

important thing was not they gave right or wrong

answer, the most significant point was that they

spoke out then they could make improvement,

the aim of speaking lessons and that they learned

from their mistakes Moreover, all the teacher

in the interview claimed that they always gave

students higher speaking scores than they deserved

whenever they volunteered to speak In general, the

afford of instructors seem not to be enough to help

students get over their own fear of making mistakes

In term of shyness and confidence in front of the

public, when taking part in speaking activities, just

more than a fifth (20%) are shy and uncomfortable

of the attention that their speech attracted The

results of the study showed that the second-year

students are not very concerned with making a

speech in public This might be justified by the

interview with students that because the

second-year students have been fully acquainted with

the new academic context in which they have to

deliver many presentations and share ideas in front

of the whole class since they entered university In

addition, most of them (90%) disagree that “some

of my classmates speak very effectively, but I

cannot This demotivates me” According to the

interview, most of students are at the same level of

English speaking and they know each other well

after one year learning in the same department

Therefore, there are not many reasons for being

shy of speaking

In contrast, almost half of instructors believe that psychological factors were also among the most troublemaking factors which prevented students from making progress in speaking Their students seemed to be shy when they had to stand

up, the whole class was looking at them and they became the center of the class Some teachers noticed that their students seemed to feel better when they were sharing their ideas while sitting

In general, the results revealed that there was a significant difference between students’ perceptions of speaking problems and those of their English instructors in term of affective-related problems

5.2 Socially- related problems

The only socially-related problem of 91% students

is the difficulty in finding the opportunity to practice English outside the classroom In the context of Vietnam, the problem should be even more serious, as EFL students cannot find opportunities to have direct contact with native speakers of English or they are too shy to talk

to a strange foreigner they can meet on the way

In the interview, an individual participant also

mentioned: “I cannot find a partner with whom

I can practice my speaking skills outside class More importantly, I cannot find anyone who can help me improve my speaking” Thus, encouraging

students to hold debate and discussion sessions outside the classroom could be facilitative in the EFL contexts where students have less opportunity

to practice their speaking

In discussion about the support from the leaders

of the university, 100% teachers complained that there were no funds for activities or programs outside class time to help the students improve their English It was said that there was a need to have an effective educational playground for the students with useful activities outside class time, such as English clubs, English speaking contests and English music festivals To make the activities

work well and be conducted regularly, financial

support from the leaders of the university was

considered very important It was claimed that the

leaders of the university used to have a small fund

for these programs, but this fund was discontinued

last year

Teacher 7 claimed: “Academic activities

outside class time not only help students improve

English but also provide them with opportunities

to make friends and exchange information and

knowledge They can share each other the ways

they improve English Then the students can learn

from each other in these academic activities

However, there are no funds from TMU Therefore,

we cannot hold the programs regularly and

effectively.”

5.3 Instructor- related problems

82% students believed their instructors always

teach the use of oral communication strategies

This might imply that their EFL instructors are

thoroughly aware of the significant effect of oral

communication strategy instruction on speaking

skills

All students agree that the teachers have

made great effort to motivate students in English

speaking classes In their teaching, such kinds of

activities as group work or pair work have been

utilized Different kinds of visual aids such as

hand-outs, projectors, pictures, authentic videos

were used much in the class room The teacher also

combined the course book with relevant materials,

guided students to learn well During the lesson

teachers tried to create a learning atmosphere to

promote students Especially, the teachers often

attracted students’ attention and promoted them

in learning, and provided students with a lot of

chances to practice speaking

However, there was one point which

demotivated students from speaking 56% students

reported that instructors often corrected their

students’ errors, which means that teachers placed great importance on error correction Surprisingly, according to questionnaires and interview, all instructors reported using Communicative Language Teaching in their class, which means that they shouldn’t have focused on error correction unless errors interfere with communication, as the approach favors fluency over accuracy When error correction occurs, it generally happens through modeling, or unobtrusively in a non-threatening manner It is the traditional teacher-centered approaches which commonly feature error correction In the questionnaire, 87% of the instructors agreed that they often corrected their students’ errors in class This result indicates the persistence of an element of the repertoire of a traditional approach although most of students and instructors claimed that instructors applied Communicative Language Teaching in their classes

 Question: The instructors do not present interesting topics for discussion

Figure 2: Students’ evaluation on the topics of speaking in class

When answering this question, surprisingly about more than half of the respondents stated that the topics of speaking in class were boring Most of students in the interview thought that the speaking topics in class were difficult for them and most of them did not have any idea about the topics, which resulted in the hesitation to share their ideas with others Only 30% claimed that the

topics were interesting but they had to be definitely

well-prepared in advance to understand

5.4 Educational system and facility-related

problems

It is commonly shared by 87% students was “there

is no problem with efficient and sufficient facilities

in classrooms” In the interview, the participants

mentioned that “the audio-visual facilities are

sufficient, updated and efficient” A large body

of research indicates that there is a positive

relationship between students’ achievement and

the quality of university facilities

The second factor affecting students’

participation in English speaking lesson was class

size and limited teaching time 92% students

agreed that “the classes were overcrowded and

students are not given enough time for speaking

practice” This is due to limited time for a speaking

lesson that last for only 90 minutes, and big classes

which often have about 40 students Students,

therefore, are not provided with sufficient time for

preparation, rehearsal, and presentation As a result,

teachers tend to invite those who are voluntary

to perform their speaking task to save time

The third factor affecting 68% students

was the inefficient program of the university

where there is an overemphasis on the results of

examinations The balance between skill-oriented

and test-oriented teaching, therefore, is difficult

to keep in EFL classes, especially where 4 skills

are only required in mid-term tests but not

last-term tests One of the common complaints raised

by 96% teachers was that “the content of the tests

and examinations did not cover all macro skills”

There was a paradox within the management and

direction of the leaders of the university Although

their purpose was to equip students with English

communication skills for future employment

after graduation, they did not agree to include a

speaking section in the tests and examinations The

main reason was that the speaking tests cost time

and money However, it was believed that, without

speaking tests, the teachers and students did not have motivation for teaching and learning these skills Instead, they focus on the knowledge areas and skills that would be tested so that the students could pass the exams Teacher 4 explained further:

“The final examinations focus on grammar and writing So, if the teacher teaches students speaking skills, students may think that the teacher

is not good because what he or she teaches is not applied in the examinations So, we should change the curriculum so that the final examinations should test not only grammar and writing but also speaking skill.”

Teacher 9 expressed other opinions in relation

to this point: “If we want to teach students speaking, there should be more time for English subject, and the speaking tests must be included in the exams When the speaking tests are included

in the exams, the students will have to try hard

to improve speaking and communication skill to pass the exams, and hence, their speaking and communication skill will be better.”

5.5 Linguistically- related problems

The linguistic factor is one of the speaking skills problems reported by the majority of the EFL instructors as well as the majority of the EFL seniors The 89% of the EFL instructors believed that psychological and linguistic factors were also among the most troublemaking factors which prevented students from making progress in speaking The majority of the EFL students agreed

so 66% of the students could not find words,

collocations or structures to express their opinions They admitted that their poor general English knowledge results in their having difficulty making questions and directing them to their instructor or their classmates In fact, the difficulties for most students were the lack of vocabulary, grammatical knowledge and ideas to speak for learning

Students using Vietnamese during group work and pair work has been a big obstacle for the teaching of speaking skills The fact that

the students prefer to speak Vietnamese in pair

work and group work is a result of low English

proficiency Their limited English vocabulary and

sentence structures have prevented them from

communicating with each other efficiently As a

matter of fact, they often use Vietnamese instead of

English for communication They found speaking

in Vietnamese easier than in English Gradually,

using Vietnamese become a habit even when many

students are quite capable of expressing themselves

in English and that is why many of them do not

have the habit of speaking English in class This

will not only constrain students’ ability to think

in English but also prevent them from improving

their speaking skill

In addition, most of the students’ speaking

performance sounded unnatural because they did

not remember the structures and vocabulary when

they spoke They just looked at their book and

read 90% the EFL students reported the linguistic

factor as their most-impeding psychological

problem in speaking classes It seems that the EFL

students were aware of their poor pronunciation

and the EFL instructors also believed their EFL

students did not possess a good command of

English pronunciation The instructors might

not thus need to raise their EFL students’

awareness of their pronunciation problems any

more Moreover, the EFL instructors believed

that their EFL students thought in Vietnamese

when they spoke in English, a problem which

becomes readily evident if one teaches English

as a foreign language in Vietnam, even for just a

short period, due to mother tongue interference

6 RECOMMENDATION

6.1 Helping students to improve their

knowledge of grammar and enrich their

vocabulary

The research findings point out that the majority of

the students found it hard to carry out their speaking

tasks because of their poor vocabulary, ideas and

knowledge relating to the speaking topics Thus, the teachers should find out the speaking topics which suit for students’ language level With such

a topic, it is quite easy for students to speak and express their opinions Moreover, teachers have to create a competitive atmosphere for the students

to use new words and structures in speaking activities Last but not least, teachers must find other materials relevant to students’ interest, provide students with vocabulary, structures and information students need

6.2 Managing speaking turns suitably

Some students in class are often hesitant or anxious about speaking the target language and some others usually tend to dominate classroom activities These differences are caused by personality traits Teachers, therefore, should balance students’ speaking turns To balance students’ speaking turns, at first, we give simple and clear instructions so that students understand what they are supposed to do Secondly, teachers should be patient when listening to students’ speaking They also need to give students opportunities and time

to practice and raise their voices freely Students are encouraged to ask questions, give suggestions, share ideas, and tell stories Teachers, furthermore, should ask students to prepare speaking tasks at home carefully By this way, teachers will help the anxious students have more time to prepare vocabulary, structures relating to the speaking topics and make them more confident in their own ability

6.3 Helping students to be confident

The findings of the study show that students felt reluctant to speak due to lack of confident Most

of them felt shy to speak English in class The teachers, therefore, should try to understand their shyness to help them have more confidence when practising English in front of the class Firstly, to reduce students’ anxieties teachers must create

an atmosphere in which they feel comfortable