No abstract

The provision of an EMK is an effective strategy for improving symptom control and preventing inpatient admissions of home-dwelling palliative care patients.

This study looked at multiple forms of silence and nonverbal cues of language anxiety in the foreign language classroom to explore their functions from the perspectives of students. Using the Classroom Oral Participation Scheme (COPS) developed by King (2013), 18 hours of observation produced data on learners’ verbal and non-verbal participation behaviours in Japanese university EFL classes. The data was analysed using the COPS participatory categories. Three recurring forms of silent L2 behaviour were identified: short responses, use of L1, and non-talk. Semi-structured follow-up interviews were carried out with 14 studentswhose silent behaviour was observed and transcribed into a corpus of 43,711 words. In addition to facilitative functions of silence such as cognitive processing, interviewees reported using silence to navigate interpersonal interactions with their classmates and fear of negative evaluation by peers. Findings illustrate how anxious learners may limit social exchanges in the target language for image protection purposes. For example, some students used short responses to avoid revealing a different opinion to their partner that might lead to an awkward interaction. The results suggest that awareness of nonverbal cues and silent behaviour - with multiple forms and functions, should be explored further as an approach to detecting language anxiety in EFL contexts.

For some language learners, feeling too nervous to speak in the target language in the classroom can generate an array of negative thoughts; from frustration due to missed speaking practice opportunities to anxiety over their language skills (Curry, Maher, Peeters, 2020). Using King's (2014; King Smith, 2017) cognitive-behavioural model of silent L2 learners' anxiety, this paper examines the relationship between language learners' anxiety and in-class silent behaviour in the context of a Japanese university EFL classroom. Forty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 participants who felt that anxiety limited their in-class oral participation. Initially, almost all the participants attributed their silence and speaking anxiety to a lack of linguistic ability, such as insufficient vocabulary or poor pronunciation. However, more potent underlying factors were revealed during the reframing exercise, suggesting that anxiety related to social performance and interpersonal relationships with peers also triggered their silent behaviours.

Students describing feelings of anxiety and a lack of confidence for speaking in a foreign language can be a common phenomenon in the context of Japanese higher education. We believe that cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) techniques can be used to help such learners overcome these feelings. A scenario-based questionnaire, adapted from Gkonou and Oxford’s MYE (2016), was designed in order to examine a number of speaking situations which were thought to induce anxiety, the emotions students associate with these situations and why they feel them, whether there are any situational factors influencing their perceptions, and what coping strategies they may or may not use. Using data collected from 85 first-year English-language majors, we found that ‘You want to say something in English in class, but you don’t’ was the most negatively rated scenario. This was reported as a frequent occurrence and was also a scenario where they lacked coping strategies to deal with their negative emotions. The data also show that there are notable, significant correlations between how frequently students experience any of the given scenarios and how they rate their emotions, with the more frequently a scenario is experienced, the more negatively it is evaluated. This data will be utilised to design CBT-based activities to reduce anxiety in the foreign language classroom.