A Study On English Classroom Anxiety Of Senior High School Students

Since 1980s, with the rapid development of researches on foreign language teaching and learning, more and more researchers have been paying attention to language learning anxiety, especially foreign language classroom anxiety, which is one of the most important affective factors influencing learners' learning efficiency. In China, there are so many researchers contributing to studying English learners' classroom anxiety. After browsing many related researches, the author finds out that the majority of these studies take Chinese college students as participants to explore the relationship between English classroom anxiety and English proficiency. Some of them further explain the correlation between learners' English classroom anxiety and their oral English proficiency. Others explicitly investigate the connection between English classroom anxiety and English reading anxiety. Nevertheless, the author holds that we should pay more attention to the fundamental stage of English learning in China and more empirical studies need to be conducted to further probe the correlation between senior high school students' English classroom anxiety and their English proficiency.Based on abundant theoretical foundation, such as Krashen's affective filter hypothesis and Rogers' humanism education theory, and taking 80 Grade two senior high school students from No.1 Middle School in Suzhou as subjects, the author conducts the present study on English classroom anxiety of senior high school students to explore the relationship between English classroom anxiety and English proficiency. What's more, the author also combines English classroom anxiety with language learners' personal factors, confirming the hypothesis that students with different gender and personality have different levels of English classroom anxiety. As for research instruments, questionnaires are used as the major one and interview to 3 English teachers and 6 students as a complementary one to explore all of the research questions. The analysis of the collected data indicates that 88.75% of the subjects experience a comparatively high level of English classroom anxiety. The female students suffer a slightly higher English classroom anxiety than male students, and the introverted students experience a relatively higher anxiety than extroverted students. Furthermore, English classroom anxiety and English proficiency are negatively related to each other and the correlation is significant at the 0.05 level. Most of the English classroom anxiety originates from test anxiety and communication apprehension, especially the test anxiety. Finally, the author expects to provide effective suggestions for both English teachers and students to alleviate English classroom anxiety and facilitate English learning.