Effect of Flipped Teaching on High School Students' L2 Grammatical Achievement: Exploring Their Foreign Language Anxiety

Although the review of literature provides some advantages for the flipped classroom learning model in education, there is little research assessing the efficiency of the flipped learning model on second or foreign language (L2/FL) learners’ grammar achievements. Moreover, foreign language anxiety (FLA) is an affective factor that is undesirable in the process of L2 grammar learning and should be reduced in classes in schools. The aim of this study was to examine whether the implementation of the flipped classroom model had a significant effect on the grammar achievement of high school EFL students in Iran. Also, it explored their FLA in the flipped classroom. To these ends, two researcher-made parallel versions of a grammar test (grammar pretest and posttest) were developed to examine 60 high school students’ L2 grammar achievement in two intact classes from a high school in Isfahan. The participants were assigned into two separate groups (experimental and control). Furthermore, a semistructured interview was conducted to collect qualitative data from the 30 participants in the experimental (flipped) group. The quantitative data were analyzed by means of ANCOVA tests. Also, the qualitative data from the interviews were scrutinized through thematic analysis. ANCOVA results revealed the significant effect of flipped learning on the students’ L2 grammatical achievement. The qualitative data analysis also provided information about the flipped students’ FLA level, sources of anxiety, and coping strategies to deal with FLA. The findings have implications for the use of flipped learning in enhancing students' L2 grammar knowledge and reducing their FLA.