Investigating the effect of language anxiety of secondary English language learners on online interactions from the perspective of language learning centers in Tehran

This study was conducted with the aim of investigating the opinion of Iranian secondary English language learners about language anxiety. To achieve the goals of this research, 180 secondary English language learners were selected from Aref Language Institute and Ishraq Language Institute in Tehran. Skill level was determined by OPT. They participated in five virtual test sessions twice a week through WhatsApp and answered one of the mentioned questionnaires in each session and sent their answer sheet as soon as they finished. In data analysis, steps were applied. First, the questionnaire was distributed to the participants through WhatsApp. Second, after they finished answering the questionnaires, their answers were collected through WhatsApp. Then the quantitative data was processed and the results of the questionnaire were presented as a percentage. Thirdly, the telephone discussion was conducted and recorded. Fourth, group discussion transcripts were analyzed and compared with quantitative data. The goal was to find out if the qualitative data supported the quantitative data. Regression analysis was used to analyze the data and to evaluate the strength of the relationships between the variables. A mixed design was used to conduct this research. That is, this study collected qualitative data as well as quantitative data. The study concluded that anxiety may increase because students may feel that other students speak English better than them. In some cases, learners were afraid that other students would laugh at them when they spoke. In addition, some of them may worry about their English grammar problems and the quality of the teacher's correction. Learners who had more experience in challenging tasks were more willing to learn new interesting and useful things. According to the results of the research, most of the learners will be able to solve their problems if they put in the necessary effort and rely on their coping abilities, but most of them did not have enough motivation to do so.

Investigating the effect of language anxiety of secondary English language learners on online interactions from the perspective of language learning centers in Tehran Keywords:

Language anxiety , mixed-methods design