Abstract:

Anxiety is found a contributing factor for all students. It also determines learners’ attitude and motivation toward learning a foreign language [1]. Besides, language classes have always been among the most anxiety-provoking courses [2,3, 4]. It has been found that anxious students learn a list of vocabulary in a slower rate and they can remember them with more difficulty [5]. In a recent study, they also found that only Communicative Anxiety is a factor in both the acquisition and production of French vocabulary [6]. Thus, learners seem to need opportunities in which they can freely talk, with the least amount of anxiety. Movie discussion (MD) seems to be among the solutions. This kind of interaction involves no, or at least very little, anxiety, due to the friendly environment of the classroom when the students watch the movie and discuss it. The main aim of this study was to examine the impact of Movie Discussion on Iranian language learner anxiety. Different instructional methods were designed to present MD which could decrease the level of language learner anxiety. Short clips were extracted from three movies and various tasks were designed for the learners to discuss and interact in their groups. This qualitative research relied on data collected through questionnaire as well as observations and interviews. The questionnaire was extracted from Gardner’s [7] motivation and attitude test battery (MATB). The findings of this descriptive study revealed that the use of MD not only decreased students’ anxiety while speaking but also enhanced participants’ confidence to speak. Learners took MD as a break and enjoyed doing the tasks and activities. They admitted that they spoke more confidently and with far less anxiety in MD classes.

Keywords:

Movie Discussion, interaction, anxiety, communicative task.