A Comparative Study Between High School Students’ Anxiety In Virtual And Physical Oral English Class From The Perspective Of Activity Theory

Foreign Language Anxiety(FLA)is one of the affective factors hindering language learning,which interferes with the learner’s input,understanding and output of their foreign language.It has been manifested that the classes demanding more on public expression was affected more by FLA adversely compared with other types of English classes such as reading and witting classes.It will benefit the learner’s learning effect if the FLA of the students can be controlled to an optimum level especially when the learners show high anxiety level in oral foreign classes.Recently,more and more English network-courses are emerging on different online software or stream platforms.As one of the popular mobile social software,Wechat enjoys multiple functions like picture and video sharing,voice and text message sending in both private and public chat forms.It is characterized in its openness,shareability,cooperativity and interaction,which are exactly favorable for the organization of oral English class on it.Since that most interaction on Wechat are realized by voice messages,assumptions are hold that Wechat oral class is less anxiety-provoking than the traditional physical oral English class.This study was conducted in a foreign language high school to improve the oral English of the students aiming for undergraduate programs abroad.In this study,62 senior 2 students were assigned into 2 groups with similar average Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety(FLCA)level to take oral English class in different forms.The experimental group had the oral English class on Wechat for one month,while the control group took the class in the physical classroom.The comparative analysis of the students’ FLCA data yielded no significant difference between the control and experimental groups.To probe into the reasons led to this,the third-generation of Activity Theory(AT)was taken to gain insight into the contradictions between the physical oral English class and the virtual Wechat class from the perspective of 16 sample students who had transitioned from physical class to the virtual online one.How technology-mediated method of learning affected the students in their learning activity and further led to the fluctuation of the results of the students’ FLCA was stressed in this study.The study manifests:1.The FLCA levels among the senior highs who aiming for undergraduate programs abroad in the foreign language school is relatively high.2.The effect to alleviate the students’ anxiety of virtual oral English class by Wechat compared with traditional physical oral English class was not significant.3.The change into the technology-mediated method resulted in the transformation of the whole student’s learning activity in the way that many new contradictions appeared,and the non-significant FLCA fluctuation of the students between the virtual oral English class and the physical one could be explained by the contradictions detected in the perspective of AT theory.