Senior High School Students’ English Classroom Learning Anxiety And The Countermeasures

With the development of humanistic psychology, foreign language educators andresearchers have been paying more attention to learners’“affective variables” in languagelearning since the1960s. They have increasingly recognized affective variables as thesignificant factors in accounting for the differential success in foreign language learners. Ofall these factors, language anxiety is possibly the most pervasive obstruction in foreignlanguage learning.Anxiety is one of the important factors to hinder the development of language ability andprevent students adopting effective learning practices. However, few studies on languageanxiety have been carried out in foreign language classroom especially in China. Theempirical research on high school students’ foreign language classroom learning anxiety is notenough. The problem about how to reduce high school students English classroom anxietyand improve the language learning efficiency always plagues high school teachers andstudents in China.From the perspective of general education, educational psychology and cognitivepsychology, this paper investigates the impact of student’s classroom anxiety on their Englishlearning. An adapted Foreign Language Anxiety Scale is used to measure240students’anxiety level in senior grade two, to investigate the correlation between their Englishclassroom anxiety and their English learning and to analyze the characteristics of thedistribution of anxiety scores in their English learning. In view of Chinese culture and thecharacteristics of Chinese language learning, the source and influence of the anxiety areanalyzed. The result shows that,The students in the Jing Xian Senior Middle School have high anxiety scores in averagelevel, but it is not serious.There is a statistically significant negative correlation between English classroomlearning anxiety and English learning achievements. The results show that the greaterachievements ones made, the lower their fear of negative evaluation, test anxiety and other anxiety scores ones got. But instead the littler achievements ones made, the higher their fearof negative evaluation, test anxiety and other anxiety scores ones got. Among them, there isnot significant negative correlation between the communication apprehension and Englishlearning achievements.Significant gender difference exists in other anxiety and achievements. Other anxietylevel of male students is significantly higher than female’s. There is no significant genderdifference in the fear of negative evaluation, communication apprehension, test anxiety andtotal anxiety.Significant class difference exists in students’ achievements. And there is no significantclass difference in the fear of negative evaluation, communication apprehension, test anxietyand total anxiety.This indicates that foreign language classroom anxiety is an important factor influencingthe second language acquisition. The causes for anxiety can be attributed to the greatinfluence of Chinese cultural background, the characteristics of Chinese language learningand individual differences. In this thesis it is suggested that starting from the culturebackground, teachers should pay attention to students’ individual differences, create a livelyclassroom atmosphere, set up students’ English learning confidence and regard decreasing theclass anxiety as one of the goals of teaching to improve their English learning efficiency.