Necessity of improving learners' self-esteem and lowering anxiety

Essay from the year 2008 in the subject English - Pedagogy, Didactics, Literature Studies, grade: 2,0, Bielefeld University, language: English, abstract: This paper will comment on the teaching practice of lowering learners', especially school pupils', anxiety and improving self-esteem in the classroom. Based on the course book 'Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom' by Zoltán Dörnyei, the essay 'Anxiety and Identity in the Language Classroom' by Christopher Stroud and Lionel Wee as well as 'Voices from the Language Classroom' by Kathleen M. Baily and David Nunan, I will first of all explain the term anxiety and its significance in foreign language didactics. I will then look at strategies teachers might use in order to alleviate the level of anxiety in the classroom and put these strategies into a critical context. This will lead to a concluding paragraph dealing with the relevance of these strategies for teachers and their teaching.