on the classification of strategies employed by efl teachers to cope with the language learners’ online language classroom anxiety

Language anxiety has been of much concern to applied linguists and english language teachers since a couple of years ago. as an affective variable, foreign language anxiety has been viewed as a factor that has potential negative effects on learners’ language learning and performance. language anxiety and its impacts on efl learners’ academic achievement have been well explored by a large number of the researchers interested in the field. however, the strategies which efl teachers use to cope with language learners’ anxiety in online classes has not been well investigated. this study was an attempt to deeply delve into the coping strategies used by efl teachers in online english language classes, to validate the developed scale, and to make a comparison between the less and more experienced efl teachers as well as the certified and non-certified efl teachers’ coping strategies. to meet the research goals, a mixed-methods research design was used. in the qualitative phase, through using a phenomenological study, the researcher extracted the coping strategies teachers use in online classes. for the qualitative phase, 20 teachers were interviewed for purposive sampling and for the quantitative phase around 120 participants were selected through convenience sampling. then, the researcher developed scale was validated through running confirmatory factors analysis. results showed that the 24 items were reduced to three factors: establishing a safe environment for efl learners, using the learners’ l1 and engaging the language learners in classroom activities. next, the researcher developed scale consisting of 24 items was submitted to certified and non-certified teachers as well as less and more experience ones. the quantitative data were analyzed through using independent sample-t-tests. results showed that certified teachers more frequently use the coping strategies than the non-certified in online classes and the more experienced teachers were better than the less experienced ones. results have theoretical and practical significance for the teachers, teacher educators, and school managers.