Generalist class teachers are increasingly regarded the most suited to teach English to young learners. They know the learners best and can adapt to the needs of the group and individual children. In addition, they can include short sections of English throughout the school day and make use of both own-language and English as they deal with classroom routines and current topics in a way that is not possible for language teachers who only come by for English lessons.
The task of preparing generalist student teachers to teach English in primary school in Sweden presents at least two challenges. Firstly, the time allotted for English courses is limited. Secondly, these students have not actively chosen to become teachers of English, specifically, but must take and pass these courses. Student teachers may in fact not look forward to teaching, or even using, English, which teacher educations (most often specialists in language education, with a strong interest in languages) may fail to recognize.
Therefore, to investigate levels of foreign language anxiety for student teachers in Sweden, 193 student teachers filled out a questionnaire about their attitudes to listening to and speaking during their seminars in Teaching English to young learners. Comparing tentative results to a similar study with young learners in Sweden (Nilsson, 2019), it appears that student teachers experience similar levels of FLA.
Such insight is important to make the most of limited seminar time with student teachers. Implications may involve addressing the topic of language anxiety, which may be beneficial not only for anxious student teachers but also their peers, as well as the young learners they will face in their future classrooms, aiming to build safe classroom atmospheres and foster self-confident learners.
