The influence of conventional and distance flipped instruction on EFL learners' self-regulation skills and anxiety while teaching speaking skills

Flipped learning has emerged as an innovative approach and provided interactive opportunities for students who are rapidly adopting new technologies. In a flipped classroom, learners are required to do cognitively challenging and engaging tasks in class instead of trying to do this "heavy work" at home. With the spread of the COVID-19, a new concept has also appeared: distance or online flipped instruction, which basically refers to flipping synchronous online classes. To this end, the present study attempts to find out the possible influence of conventional flipped instruction along with online flipped instruction on EFL learners' self-regulated L2 learning strategy use and foreign language classroom anxiety while teaching speaking skills. Nearly 80 A2 level students at Middle East Technical University participated in the study. Four intact classes were randomly assigned to one of the two treatment groups: experimental and control. The experimental group students started to use Google Classroom application besides their regular classes. In the experimental group, students were required to watch videos and take notes on various topics before the actual lesson. The influence of the flipped learning model on learners' self-regulatory behaviours and foreign language classroom anxiety was analyzed by comparing control and experimental groups' survey results before and after the implementation of the flipped instruction. Finally, to get a deeper understanding, semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten students to explore the learners' views in the experimental group as well.