An Empirical Study Of The English Learning Anxiety Of The Seventh Grade Students In Rural Areas

For many students, learning English is not easy. In order to let the students get highscores in the English exam, parents and teachers leave no stones unturned. They always warnthe students that they should spend more time on the English learning. However, the students’English achievements are not satisfying. In fact, English learning can be affected by both thesubjective and objective factors. In the previous studies of English learning, people mainlyfocused on the objective factors, among which teacher factor is an important one. They triedto promote students’ English performance through improving the instructors’ teaching skills.With the rise of humanism, people began to draw their attention from the teachers to thestudents and students’ inner factors become the focus of the study. Humanism emphasizespeople-oriented and students-centered education, which advocates that the instructors shouldrespect, understand and trust the students and value their emotions. In our country, Englishcurriculum standard of2003makes it clear that cultivating students’ emotional attitude is oneof the most important training objectives, and it cannot be neglected. From then on, students’emotional attitude has caught more attention. Emotional attitude is a complex concept,including motivation, interest, confidence, anxiety and so on. Among these emotionalvariables, anxiety is an important one which can produce a significant influence on theEnglish learning.Studies on the foreign language anxiety abroad are relatively extensive. They not onlystudied the effects and sources of the anxiety, but also explored the methods of reducing thelearners’ anxiety level. Meanwhile, scholars at home also conducted many researches andinvestigations on the English learning anxiety. Their research subjects were mainly collegeand middle school students. Though rural middle school students have caught their attention, studies on the rural7thgrade students are insufficient.7thgrade students in rural areas is aspecial group. Firstly, their English learning is in the initial stage, and the teachers should helpthem lay a solid foundation. Secondly, they are right in a critical transitional period. As for life,a majority of the students begin to live at school and lead an independent life; for study, thenumber of the courses and the difficulty of the learning tasks are increasing. Thirdly, theirmental and physical development is in an important stage. Personal consciousness comes intobeing; self-control ability is relatively weak; the phenomena of dislike of schools are breeding.Finally, some of the students are leftover children, and they lack enough care from theirparents, which makes them apt to have mental problems. Therefore, it is quite necessary forpeople to pay more attention to this group. Based on this, this study chooses some of theseventh grade students in rural areas to have a questionnaire survey and interview in order toanswer the following questions:(1) What’s the overall situation of the7thgrade students’ anxiety in English learning?(2) What factors influence the anxiety of7thgrade students’ when they learn English?(3) What methods can be used to reduce students’ anxiety in English learning?Based on Horwitz’s foreign language classroom anxiety scale, the author makes a studyon two rural middle schools: the No1junior high school in Ban Podian and the No2juniorhigh school in Han Zhuang. The researcher uses the method of random sampling to select oneclass from each school. According to subjects’ points in the questionnaire, the first three andthe last three students on the two score lists would be interviewed. The results of thequestionnaire and interview are as follows:(1) The phenomenon is universal that the7thgrade students in rural areas are suffering arelatively high level of anxiety in English learning.(2) The factors influencing students’ anxiety are various, including student factors,school and family factors. Student factors mainly introduce7thgrade students’ personalities and age characteristics. Besides, leftover children’s characteristics are introduced specially;school factors include too much tests, inadequate use of multi-media, unscientific evaluationand large capacity of classroom. When it comes to the family factors, parents’ educationbackground, their views on education and their expectations foe the students would beintroduced. What’s more, the author also presents the students’ ways to success and theleft-behind children’s living conditions.According to the humanistic education and the results of the survey, this paper offerssome suggestions for reducing the students’ anxiety in learning English. First of all, theteacher should help the students make plans and improve their ability of self-management.Secondly, the teacher should try to lead students’ real life into classroom and combine studywith daily life. Thirdly, the teacher should have heart-to-heart talks with students regularlyand caring for their inner needs, which will be beneficial for developing a goodteacher-student relationship. Finally, the proper evaluation should be fostered during learningprocess.This paper aims to display the overall situation of rural7thgrade students’ Englishlearning anxiety and attract more attention from parents, schools and society. Throughexploring the sources of students’ English learning anxiety, this paper tries to find out someeffective and efficient methods to reduce students’ anxiety in English learning. What’s more,this paper is expected to provide some theoretical basis and valuable reference for theteaching practice.