Investigating EFL Students’ and Teachers’ Attitudes towards the Impact of Anxiety on Students’ Oral Performance The Case of First-Year LMD Students of English at Larbi Tebessi University -Tebessa-

Abstract

The main goal of learning a foreign language is to become able to speak it. It is why, just like any other activity there are disparate obstacles that can delay the learning of a foreign language and affect speech, anxiety is the obstacle more common. Foreign language students claim to have several barriers to that they have real and perfect oral performances. Consequently, the main purpose of this study is to investigate the attitudes of EFL students and teachers towards the impact of anxiety about the student's oral performance. The case of this study targets participants who were 48 first-year LMD students specializing in English and five teachers in EFL at the University of Larbi Tébessi (Tebessa), during the 2019/2020 academic year. For To achieve the objective of this study, we opted for a descriptive-analytical method. using two questionnaires distributed online for students and for teachers. The information collected from these two questionnaires was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The results of this study indicate that anxiety has a negative effect on students of English in general and oral performance in particular, as they presented that the fear of negative evaluations is the most provocative of the trigger. The study offers recommendations and suggestions on reducing student anxiety and improve their oral performance in EFL contexts.