Browsing by Author "Siriwardena, S."

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A qualitative study on second language anxiety: Teacher perceptions and alleviation strategies
(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Siriwardena, S.
The second language classroom has widely been acknowledged by learners as an environment which is highly anxiety generating. Most of the learners express their anxiety of the second language in different forms, to the extent that students simply refuse to speak in English. The results of the earlier research indicate that anxiety was often stated as one of the major causes of decreased motivation to learn, interference to learning and poor performance in the English as a Second Language classroom. This study explores the teachers’ perceptions of what causes language anxiety in second language learners, and what strategies teachers use to get students to speak in English in the second language classroom. The study has used semi-structured interviews to collect qualitative data from second language teachers of three universities of Sri Lanka and the analysis of this study is based on grounded theory. The findings of the study suggest that language anxiety can stem from learner’s own sense of ‘self’ and their cognitive and language-related difficulties. It also indicates that second language teachers practice a number of different strategies to prompt and help students to speak in English in the classroom. Through these findings, the researcher was able to recommend a variety of strategies to teachers that would help alleviate speaking anxiety felt by second language learners.
Second Language Anxiety among Undergraduates of Three Sri Lankan Universities
(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Siriwardena, S.
A considerable number of second language learners suffer from language anxiety when they enter the second language classroom. Most of them express their anxiety of the language in different forms, to the extent that students simply refuse to speak in English. The results of earlier research indicate that anxiety was often stated as one of the major causes of decreased motivation to learn, interference to learn and poor performance in the ESL classroom (Horwirz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986; Gregerson, 2003; Karunakaran, Rana & Manwarul, 2013). This study was designed to explore the teachers‟ perception of what causes language anxiety in second language learners of three universities of Sri Lanka. Anxiety is considered a complex and multi-faceted psychological phenomenon by past researchers and they have suggested the use of different perspectives and approaches to investigate this phenomenon. This study therefore adopted interviews as a qualitative data gathering tool and 11 ESL teachers from the three universities were interviewed. The findings suggested that language anxiety can stem from learner‟s own sense of „self‟ and their cognitive and language-related difficulties. Social and cultural aspects that may lead to language anxiety were also brought to the attention by the findings. Through the findings the researcher was able to recommend a variety of strategies to teachers that would help alleviate speaking anxiety felt by second language learners.
Teachers’ Perception of Language Anxiety in the ESL Classroom
(Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Kelaniya, 2015) Siriwardena, S.
A considerable number of second language learners suffer from language anxiety when they enter the second language classroom. A majority of school goers in Sri Lanka study in either in Sinhala or Tamil and are exposed to the English language only in the English language classroom. Students carry this anxiety to the ESL classroom even at the university level. Most of them express their anxiety of the language in different forms, to the extent that students simply refuse to speak in English. The results of earlier research indicates that anxiety was often stated as one of the major causes of decreased motivation to learn, interference to learn and poor performance in the ESL classroom (Horwirz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986; Gregerson, 2003; Karunakaran, Rana & Manwarul, 2013). This study was designed to explore teachers‘ perception of how language anxiety affects students‘ participation in the ESL classroom. 8 English teachers teaching students of four different student proficiency levels of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Kelaniya were selected for this study. The research methodology used in this study is a mixed approach where a questionnaire and a semi structured interview were used to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. The findings of this study will aid the researcher to contribute to ESL classroom of the University of Kelaniya to improve speaking abilities of the second language learners.