A Study On Anxiety Of Junior Middle School Students In English Learning

In language teaching,emotion and cognition are two inseparable aspects.With the rise of humanistic psychology,the situation of “emphasizing knowledge and devaluing emotion” existing in junior middle school English teaching has been altered.Emotional factors in English teaching have received attention from researchers at home and abroad.English learning anxiety which is a kind of passive emotional factor seriously influences students' learning efficiency and the effects of language's input and output.In the past,overseas students,and non-English college students and adults used to be the research objects of English learning anxiety;however,researches of junior middle school students on English learning anxiety were extremely rare.Thus,it is more meaningful to conduct a research of junior middle school students' English learning anxiety.Based on the theories of pedagogy and psychology related to anxiety and some language learning theories,this paper aims to explore junior middle school students' anxiety problem in the process of English learning and puts forward some countermeasures.The thesis aims to answer the following questions:(1)What is the present situation of anxiety of junior middle school students in the process of learning English?(2)Do anxiety dimensions have any differences in terms of academic performances and gender in students' English learning procedure?(3)What are the reasons for junior middle school students' English learning anxiety?200 junior middle school English students in Grade 8 from Yantai Foreign Language Experimental School are the participants of questionnaires.Questionnaires which are adapted from Horwitz's Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale are utilized to explore the current situation of junior middle school students' English learning anxiety and the achievements and gender differences of anxiety dimensions and the reasons.Data of questionnaires are collected and analyzed by SPSS16.0.In order to get more complete and specific data and make up for the shortage of questionnaires,classroom observations were conducted.Ten English teachers and their students of 10 classes are the participants of classroom observations.Classroom observation scales which are adapted from Yuhang High School Classroom View Framework are used to record the observed results and explore the present situation of junior middle school students' English learning anxiety and the reasons behind the phenomenon.The major findings of the research results are shown below:1)Most junior middle school students have moderate anxiety and only a few students have high anxiety and low anxiety.Test anxiety is most serious for them.2)About the achievements differences of anxiety dimensions,there is a negative correlation between students' English achievements and their English learning anxiety.About the gender differences of anxiety dimensions,firstly,in terms of communication anxiety,girls have more intense anxiety than boys.In respect of fear of negative evaluation,male students are easier to get depressed.Regarding the aspect of test anxiety,the difference between male and female students is not significant.3)The reasons for the junior middle school students' English learning anxiety mainly include three factors which include school factors,teacher factors and student factors.Built on the above research results,this paper puts forward some suggestions to relieve junior middle school students' English learning anxiety.