A Study Of The Impact Of Foreign Language Anxiety In Vocational High School ELT

With the development of humanistic psychology in the 1960's, more and more language educators and researchers come to realize the disadvantages of the traditional teaching approach, which pays more attention to the development of the learners'cognition, but neglects their affection. It is realized that the affective side of learning is not in opposition to the cognitive side. That is to say, neither the cognitive nor the affective has the last word, and, neither can be separated from the other. Thus, the research in language learning and teaching is shifting more weight to learners'affective domain.Foreign language learning is a complex process involving both cognitive and affective factors. Among different affective factors, language anxiety stands out as one of the main blocking ones for effective language learning.This paper, first of all, traces the theoretical foundation of foreign language anxiety, and then gives a systematical description about the sources, development and negative effects of foreign language anxiety.Both quantitative and qualitative surveys are adopted in this study. 163 students from Jiujiang Vocational High School are selected for the study. In the quantitative study, students'language anxiety levels are obtained by using Foreign Language Anxiety Classroom Scale (FLAC) designed by Horwitz (1986); in the qualitative study, some interviews with students and English teachers are conducted to provide supplementary data to the results from the quantitative study. All data are processed with the help of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 13.0.The findings of the study show that, language anxiety interferes the students in vocational high school. Almost half of the students are highly anxious, that is a warning level. The results also indicate the negative correlation between foreign language learning and anxiety. The relationship between factors of foreign language anxiety and achievement are also investigated. Besides, a number of personal variables, such as gender, family background and personality related to language anxiety are discussed. Finally, through open-ended questions and interviews, and by taking into consideration several factors such as Chinese culture, the circumstance of English teaching in vocational high school, the researcher found two kinds of factors that dominate anxiety-provoking: the learners'internal factors such as self-esteem, tolerance of ambiguity, unscientific beliefs about language learning, while the external factors including competitiveness between peers, social pressure, classroom activities and methods, test, identity and culture shock and so on.Several pedagogical applications are proposed on the basis of the findings in this study. That is (a) Establish a new role for teachers; (b) Create more supportive classroom environments; (c) Provide comprehensible input; (d) Change learner beliefs about language learning and provide anxiety-reducing technique.Based on the findings that language anxiety plays a negative role in language learning, the teachers of English can try to help the students to find out more countermeasures to reduce anxiety so as to promote the effect and efficiency of English teaching and learning in vocational high school as well as students'development as a whole person.