The Mediation of Multimodal Affordances on Anxiety in the English as a Foreign Language Classroom: A Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Foreign language classroom anxiety has been confirmed to be dynamic, emergent and situation-bound. The analysis of the data in the previous studies were mainly limited to the medium of language eliciting data via participants’ interviews, self-reports or diaries. However, to contribute to the investigation of the dynamic nature of classroom anxiety, we should explore it multimodally via the processing of different semiotic resources such as movement and gesture. Based on a systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis approach, the purpose of the present study was to explore the dynamics of anxiety in learning English at Iranian language institutes. Data was collected through videotaping the lessons, stimulated recall interviews, and language learning journals. The analysis of the collected data resulted in two teaching scenarios which were videotaped in an intermediate English language course at one of the institutes of Mashhad, Iran, rated as high anxiety provoking and low anxiety provoking by eight participating students in stimulated recall interviews. The transcribed scenarios were, firstly, annotated through Multimodal Analysis Video software, in order to identify the use of semiotic resources such as language, gesture, and gaze and, secondly, were analyzed, compared and discussed to discover their differences. The findings shed more lights on the need for English language teachers to recognize, identify, and regulate multimodal semiotic resources to manage students’ anxiety in the classroom.