Feeling of Foreign Language Anxiety Among Non-Native-Speaking Teachers Having their Postgraduate Program

Researchers and even language teachers have been concerned for a couple of decades with the concept of foreign languages anxiety in the field of English language teaching. Since the number of Non-Native-Speaking (NNS) teachers is globally growing (Selvi, 2011), this indicates a need to addressing teacher language anxiety more than ever. Therefore, the present study was set out to assess the foreign language anxiety among postgraduate students who were NNS teachers having their postgraduate program. This study was carried out with 48 international NNS teachers during their postgraduate program at Eastern Mediterranean University in Northern Cyprus to explore a such feeling. Two questionnaires (FLCAS and TFLAS) were administered with all participants in the current study. A group of eight participants were purposefully chosen from the total number of participants based on their level of anxiety and were asked to state their opinion in an open - ended written question scale (Affinities) about the foreign language anxiety sources. They were also interviewed in order to explore the impact of language anxiety on language teaching approaches. First, based on the results of FLCAS, the current study found that NNS teachers did experience different level of foreign language anxiety. The results demonstrated that some participants suffered from high levels of anxiety. Second, Class Arrangement, Genetic and Personal Characteristics, Anxieties, and Social and Cultural Factors were the main sources of their feeling of language anxiety. On other hand, the affinities Achievement, Motivation and Interests, and Individual Learning Approach were not found to be focal points that hinder the participants’ language learning in this study. Third, this study found that anxious postgraduates who were NNS teachers are highly susceptible to feelings of foreign language teacher anxiety which possibly affect their approach of teaching the target language. The results revealed that anxious postgraduates appeared to have a sense of perfectionism tendencies by showing their high demands for teaching the language anxiety. The study ends with recommendations for anxious teachers in order to alleviate their anxiety. Keywords: Foreign Language Learning Anxiety, Teacher Foreign Language Anxiety, Affinity, NNS teachers, Postgraduate Students.