A Survey Of English Learning Anxiety Of Under-achievers In The Senior Middle School

With the development of humanistic psychology, more educators and researcherspay more attention to learners’ affective variables in language learning. They realizedthat affective variables are the significant factors leading to the differences among thelearners. Foreign language learning anxiety is probably the most common obstructionin foreign language learning. As one of the most important emotional factors, foreignlanguage anxiety is a combination of many types of negative emotional states. It islikely to predict the learners’ foreign language development and act as an obstacle forthe students to adopt effective learning strategies.The under-achiever in this paper refers to the students with normal intelligence.However, these students can not satisfy the requirements of teaching objective.According to the previous researches, the existence of under-achiever is a universalphenomenon. It has been the research topic of some famous researchers for manyyears. As the beginning of the new learning period, senior one is very important to theunder-achievers. It is a period with many new challenges but also provides plenty ofopportunities to them. The study on foreign language learning anxiety of theunder-achievers in senior one is significant to the teachers as well as the students. It ishoped that teachers could provide help to these students who need care and attention.Aware of this, the author do this study to explore several questions in this field.This paper starts by reviewing the relevant researches on anxiety and under-achieversat home and abroad. On the basis of these researches, the investigation is conducted inthree senior middle schools in Hebei province. Both quantitative and qualitativemethods are used in this paper. In the quantitative research, the Foreign LanguageAnxiety Scale designed by Horwitzs was distributed to150English under-achieversfrom three Senior Middle Schools. They are the No.1Senior Middle School inZhuozhou, No.1Senior Middle School in Pingquan and No.6Senior Middle School inShijiazhuang. All these150subjects are from senior one. Two research questions areproposed in this period. The first, what is the current situation of English learninganxiety in the under-achievers of senior one student? The second, do the under-achievers suffer most from the test anxiety? There is another questionnaire usedin this paper, which attempts to find out the possible factors that arouse the foreignlanguage learning anxiety. In the qualitative study, the interview provided assupplementary data to the second questionnaire.The findings reveal that the under-achievers in senior one suffer from higherforeign language anxiety than the subjects in the previous studies. Amongcommunication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation, test anxietyranks high. Seven possible factors are also found in this research: poor basic Englishknowledge, the new language learning environment, unfamiliar teaching materials,the exercises beyond students’ understanding, the mismatch between junior andsenior English teaching, lack of self-confidence in English learning and problems inlearning English vocabulary. Seven counter-measures are also proposed. Thesesuggestions may reduce the under-achiever’ foreign language anxiety and inspire theteachers in the under-achievers’ English teaching.