Junior High School Foreign Language Learning Anxiety

In the history of educational research, much attention had been paid to the cognitive process of foreign language learning rather than to the emotional factors functioning during the course of learning until recently, in the 1970s, a number of researches were undertaken on the emotional elements in foreign language teaching and learning.Anxiety is a state of apprehension, uncertainty, and fear resulting from the anticipation of a realistic or fantasized threatening event or situation, often impairing physical and psychological functioning. Foreign language anxiety, as one variable of the most important emotional factors, is a combination of many kinds of negative emotional states.However, the research on foreign language anxiety is of no expectation on this point: some researches were under the western background; some were from the angle of college students. Very few related researches were set on junior high school students, especially on the junior high school students from China. So, based on some theories about foreign language anxiety and some results of the previous researches, the author investigates the perceived levels of anxiety experienced by a randomly-selected sample of junior high school foreign language students from a foreign language school and an ordinary junior high school, and makes a measurable analysis of the results gathered in the investigation in relation to the students' foreign language anxiety in English learning, attempting to answer the following research questions:1.What types of foreign language anxiety exist in different grades of junior high school students;2.What types of foreign language anxiety are most common;3.The relevance among general state anxiety, trait anxiety and foreign language anxiety;4.The reasons of English learning anxiety and anxiety-reduction measures are formulated. The result of the investigation suggests:1.The level of foreign language anxiety on junior high school students is significant, mainly includes: communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation;2.Students mainly experience communication apprehension;3.There is significant correlation between state anxiety, trait anxiety and foreign language anxiety;4.A number of variables such as environment of learning language, negotiation of meaning, views on language learning, competition, cultural shock and so on can result in the different anxiety levels among the students.The paper provides both quantitative and qualitative date, which may be helpful for Chinese English researchers and English teachers to be more aware of the negative role that anxiety plays in English classroom. By identifying the students'anxiety level and recognizing the potential sources, the instructors can help them find out some countermeasures to reduce anxiety and then obtain good learning efficiency.