GETTING ELL STUDENTS OUT OF THEIR SHELLS: ENHANCING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT THROUGH WRITING

When teaching students that speak a foreign language how to speak English or any other second language, engaging the students in the lesson is integral to the students' achievement of maximum retention of the lesson. However, engaging English language learners (ELL) students tends to be difficult due to the multitude of multicultural differences that may exist between the teacher and the many different nationalities that comprise ELL students. Further compounding the problem of engagement are language anxiety (LA) or foreign language anxiety (FLA), which are interchangeable phrases used to conceptualize the same circumstance ELL students experiences when they are asked to complete any assignment involving explicit use of the second language (L2) and become overwhelmingly nervous. Writing and group activities have both been identified as effective tools for engaging students of all paradigms in the material being taught and reducing the occurrences of LA or FLA amongst ELL students. This research explores the occurrence of LA or FLA amongst several classes of ELL students to determine how effective writing and group are at alleviating the occurrence of student anxiety in conjunction with L2 assignments and whether these tools help get ELL students out of their shells to help facilitate learning and retention of the L2 for students learning another language. The determinations extrapolated from the surveys administered to ELL students indicated that the participants were less likely to experience LA or FLA when L2 writing involved group exercises as opposed to individual exercises.