Pronunciation anxiety is common amongst language learners and is often based on a fear of being mocked or teased for having bad pronunciation. For some, this anxiety never goes away, meaning that adults as well as children can experience pronunciation anxiety. The aim of the thesis is to examine pronunciation anxiety amongst English teachers in Sweden and how this affects their teaching. The teachers’ own pronunciation anxiety might cause them to include fever pronunciation activities in the classroom, causing their own anxiety to affect the pupils’ learning. To gather the information needed for this examination, the researcher interviewed and observed two different English teachers in Sweden in grades 4-5. During the interviews, the teachers were asked questions about their own experience of pronunciation anxiety and if they can identify pronunciation anxiety amongst their pupils. During the observations, the researcher examined what pronunciation activities the participating teachers used during their lessons and how the teachers behaved during them. The results showed that the less experienced teacher lacked pronunciation learning activities and showed signs of anxiety even though he claimed during the interview that he felt very comfortable using oral English. The more experienced teacher however, claimed that she always experiences pronunciation anxiety while using oral English, even though she used various pronunciation activities during the lesson. In conclusion, pronunciation anxiety is indeed experienced by English teachers in Sweden. However, over time, the teachers learn to somewhat ignore it for the sake of the pupils, since a lack of pronunciation activities affects the pupils’ own pronunciation learning.
Engelska