The Influence Of Gender And Grade On The Secondary School Students’ English Test Anxiety

Test anxiety is a common psychological phenomenon which occurs to the students during the examination period. If handled improperly, test anxiety will affect the students’ normal level in the examination. It will also have a negative effect on the students’ physical and mental health. Such phenomenon frequently exists in the secondary school students in our country. In recent years, a large number of studies about test anxiety have emerged in our country. However, there are few studies about the secondary school students’ English test anxiety. Accordingly, the author selects students from Yichuan Middle School in Shaanxi province as the subjects to investigate and analyze the overall situations of their English test anxiety, and to explore the factors that lead their English test anxiety, especially, the influence of gender and grade on the secondary school students’ English test anxiety. Finally, the author tries to come up with the measures to alleviate their English test anxiety.200hundred students were randomly chosen from Yichuan Middle School as the research subjects, and a combination of quantitative and qualitative method is used in this study. The research instruments used are mainly questionnaires and interviews. All the three questionnaires are designed by using closed questions. The first and the third questionnaires’ data are analyzed by the social science statistical software (SPSS19.0). First, the author investigates the overall situation of the secondary school students’ English test anxiety. Next, the author discusses the effects of gender and grade on the two group students’ English test anxiety, and finally finds out the factors that affect the secondary school students’ English test anxiety.The results of this study show that the overall situation of the junior2and senior2group students’ English test anxiety level is at a medium level. In terms of grades, there is a negative relationship between the students’ English test anxiety and their grades. That is to say, the higher the students’ grade, the less English test anxiety they have. It also means senior2students have less English test anxiety than junior2. While in terms of gender, male students’ English test anxiety is higher than female students. To sum up, the reasons of the differences on grade and gender among the two group students’ English test anxiety can be attributed to different factors. Such as, the influence of cognition, emotion, behavior and other factors. This study not only provides guidance for the secondary school students to overcome their English test anxiety, but also accumulate data for further study home and abroad.