Reducing the Impact of Social Anxiety on Group-based Learning Activities in the Language Classroom

该项目第一年的重点是调查小组工作中的焦虑程度和这方面的焦虑来源，以便为编制衡量小组工作中的焦虑的量表提供信息，这一阶段按计划进行。一项初步的探索性研究是在2022年春季和秋季学期进行的，该研究使用了现有的沟通恐惧测量方法。结果显示，大量学习者在分组或结对工作时会感到不安，并揭示了小组工作中焦虑的一些来源。在最初的调查中，对参与者的后续采访有助于进一步澄清这些焦虑的来源，并增加结果的深度。目前正在编写这一阶段的成果以供出版。此外，还介绍了焦虑对小组作业的影响，并发表了一篇关于社交焦虑测量在日本大学英语学习者中使用的有效性的论文。

The first year of the project was focused on investigating the extent of anxiety in group work and the sources of anxiety in this context in order to inform the development of a scale to measure anxiety in group work and this phase progressed as planned. An initial exploratory study using an existing measure of communication apprehension was conducted during the Spring and Fall semesters of 2022. The results revealed a large number of learners experience unease when working in groups or pairs and uncovered a number of sources of anxiety in group work. Follow-up interviews with participants in the initial survey helped to further clarify these sources of anxiety and add depth to the results. The results of this phase are presently being prepared for publication. In addition, a presentation on the impact of anxiety on group work was given, and a paper on the validity of a measure of social anxiety for use with Japanese university-level English learners was published.