DefinePK

Abstract

Foreign language anxiety researchers and scholars have conducted a sizable body of research, consistently reporting that various aspects of language teachers’ personal and professional demeanour trigger higher levels of speaking anxiety (SA) in a language classroom. However, a far less attention has been paid, in international and particularly in the Pakistani context, to a relevant question that what kinds of teacher behaviour could help alleviate students’ SA. This study aims to fill this gap in research by investigating the perspectives of Pakistani postgraduate non-major English language students about the kinds of teacher behaviour that may reduce SA. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 students while a questionnaire was administered to 170 students. The strategy of exploratory content analysis was sued to analyse qualitative data while SPSS was utilised to analyse quantitative data. Findings of our study reveal a number of teacher behaviour that could decrease students’ SA namely, teachers’ personal attributes, providing students with a comfortable classroom environment, considering students’ opinions about the learning process, encouragement by the teachers, teachers’ professional attributes, and teachers’ attitudes towards mistakes. Implications are discussed and recommendations for future studies are offered.