La fausse simplicité de la prise de parole en classe de langue étrangère

Although the importance of oral production in language learning is recognized,it remains a challenge to convince students to speak. Certainly, this is about daring to take risks, because to speak is to “expose one’s face”. Indeed, when pupils speak, they are placed in relation to their classmates and in relation to the teacher. We cannot therefore rely on the apparent simplicity of speaking in the foreign language class. The research problem presented in this article concerns, among other things, the possible reasons why some students of French as a foreign language remain silent during conversation classes. To this purpose, the findings of the FLCAS questionnaire are presented. This survey tool enabled to nominate one basic reason for the above-mentioned reluctance to speak – language anxiety.