A Study Of Classroom Questions And Students' Anxiety Control In High School English Teaching

With the development of humanistic psychology, it has deeply influenced foreign language teaching and learning in many ways. Humanistic psychology emphasizes the whole development of person, and advocates the combination of cognitive education and affective education. Therefore, affect plays an important role in second language teaching and learning. And in China, most students'second language learning process takes place in the classroom context. And among so many classroom activities, teacher's questions rank high. And in actual teaching, it is common to notice students'anxious phenomenon when asked to answer questions. Therefore, the present study is designed to find out whether students experience much anxiety when teachers ask them questions in class, and the sources and reasons of that anxiety and ways to alleviate it.This study makes use of students'questionnaires, teachers'questionnaires and interview and classroom observation to investigate 112 high school students and all English teachers in one Suzhou middle school. The major findings for research questions can be summarized as follows:1) From questionnaires and interviews, we can clearly see that students experience much anxiety after teacher raising questions.2) According to the study, the reasons for students'anxiety are: questions are difficult to answer; students'lack of confidence, fear of making mistakes or losing face, fear of negative evaluation from teachers and classmates; students not previewing or reviewing before class or after class; teacher's questions to unprepared students, etc.In light of the above findings, this study suggests that both teachers and students should enhance their understanding and sensitivity to language anxiety and teachers should ask questions in a more empathetic and skillful way and improve their questioning technique.