The Effect of Collaborative Reasoning Discussion on EFL Learners’ Anxiety

Abstract

This study was an attempt to investigate whether Collaborative Reasoning (CR) had any significant effect on pre-intermediate EFL learners' anxiety. To fulfill the purpose of this study, 60 female students who studied in Iranmehr language institute at pre-intermediate level were selected from a total number of 88 participants based on their performance on a piloted PET (2009) .Then a piloted anxiety questionnaire was assigned to the experimental and control groups having 30 participants each. The same content (2 story books) was taught to both groups throughout the 18-session treatment with the only difference that the experimental group was taught CR strategies while in the control group the common comprehension-based approach was applied. At the end of the instruction, the piloted anxiety questionnaire post-test was administered to the participants of both groups. The mean scores of the groups on pretest and posttest were computed through ANCOVA to investigate the research question raised in the study which led to the rejection of the null hypothesis. Thus, teaching CR strategies proved to have a significant effect on pre-intermediate EFL learners' anxiety.