Analysis On The Causes For The English Learning Anxiety Among Senior School Students And Strategies For It

In the 70s of 20th century, experts on language education began to realize a phenomenon: in the second language acquisition process, the acquirers'language learning is affected by emotional factors, among which the anxiety is one of the most important. In the new century, our country is attaching more and more importance to students' emotions. In the High School English Curriculum Standards, emotions have been referred to. Thus, high school English teachers should strive to transform teaching concepts and enhance learning new theories in order to overcome the negative impact of students'emotions but take full advantage of the positive role of emotional factors in the teaching process.However, in the practice of English teaching in high school, students'emotional state and anxiety have not been paid too much attention. This paper is based on anxiety-related theories in the fields of Second Language Acquisition and Psychology with the guidance of teaching practice and experiment, so as to explore the causes of language learning anxiety and also explains the meaning and classification of anxiety. It focuses on exploring the internal and external coping strategies of high school English learning anxiety.The writer adopts the methods of theoretical analysis, observation analysis, documentary analysis, cases study and experimental research to actually verify the above assumptions and search for the root cause of anxiety and strategies on how to cope with anxiety. In the field of Second Language Acquisition, Krashen's affective filter hypothesis and the input hypothesis tell us that anxiety and affective disorder are closely related, which are considered as the most prominent emotional factors impeding language acquisition.The results of experimental survey on anxiety also support the above view. That is to say, the higher the anxiety level is in high school language study, the lower the grades are in English. In other words, language learning anxiety has a negative impact on English learning. At the same time, the writer also finds the root cause of anxiety in high school English learning, which is a common effect of internal and external factors. Internal causes of anxiety contain personality, lack of self-confidence and missing collective sense of honor, and external causes include too much expectation from parents, family disharmony, not adapting to the learning environment, high learning pressure and so on.In order to reduce the negative impact of anxiety on high school students'English learning, some strategies must be taken. The writer proposes several strategies to reduce anxiety, which are cultivating interest in learning English and students' collective sense of honor, establishing a good relationship between teachers and students, reasonable arrangements for after-school exercises and proper expectations from family. What's more, interest is the best teacher, so English teachers must find effective ways to arouse students'interest in learning English.In the teaching process, the writer encourages students to learn singing beautiful English songs, divides the students into groups for cooperative learning, practices teaching with smiles, arranges two periods of lessons a week for students to complete the after-school exercises and asks the students to exchange their feelings with parents to let them understand their actual academic achievement better. Practical results show that: English songs could make students feel relaxed, because they can enjoy the beautiful lyrics with the interest of English learning fully aroused; mutual learning can develop a collective sense of honor, to enhance students self-restraint on the anxiety, because the division of labor in the collective and collaboration can strengthen mutual trust, and with cooperation in the collective the students are more likely to succeed; arrangements of about two hours every week for after-school exercises can greatly ease the anxiety level of students, because they don't have to worry about the exercises all the time or struggle to cope, but without the "care", it can be rather conducive to learning English; active communication with parents can effectively prevent the parents blindly increasing expectations on their children, ultimately benefitting the children's learning.Emotional factors such as foreign language anxiety are a major problem in English language teaching and learning. Teachers should be concerned about the impact of anxiety on learning English and attach great importance to the causes of anxiety. Teachers must try to take necessary strategies to reduce anxiety in students'English learning and create a relaxing English learning atmosphere so as to improve teaching efficiency.