A Study On English Listening Anxiety Of Return Students In Senior High Schools

Anxiety is one of the most important affective factors that have a big impact on English learning.Students are easy to get anxious in the process of English listening.In recent years,English listening anxiety has been drawn great attention,but the research subjects are mainly college students or middle school students.The return students in senior high schools in China is a special group and the researches on them is relatively fewer.This paper attempts to investigate the English listening anxiety of 108 return students in Mianyang Experimental Senior Middle School and analyze the causes for their anxiety.The study in this paper is carried out by the methodology of the English Listening Anxiety Questionnaire,a self-report interview and classroom observations.The English Listening Anxiety Questionnaire is based on Kim’s(2000)FLLAS.There are three dimensions in the questionnaire: listeners’ psychological anxiety,English competence,and negative evaluation.The research questions in this study are: 1.What is the overall status quo of listening anxiety of return students? To what extent do male and female return students differ in English listening anxiety? To what extent are arts and science return students different in English listening anxiety? 2.What are the causes for the listening anxiety of the return students in senior high schools?The findings of the study are summarized as follows:(1)Most return students suffer moderate level of English listening anxiety and only a few return students experience low level or high level of English listening anxiety.The female return students demonstrate slightly higher anxiety in listening than the male ones,but the difference of listening anxiety in every dimension of factors that causes listening anxiety is not significantly apparent.Most female return students work harder and better than the male ones and they expect more in the listening academic results.There is no significant difference in listening anxiety level between arts return students and science return students.But the science return students demonstrate slightly higher anxiety in the second dimension of English competence.(2)The causes for English listening anxiety of the return students are catalogued into three aspects: listener characteristics,listening process characteristics and text difficulty level.Comparatively speaking,individual characteristics have greater influence on English listening anxiety than listening process characteristics and text difficulty level.Listener characteristics mainly include poor English proficiency,lack of self-confidence and lack of attention in the listening;these are intrinsic causes that play an important part in English listening anxiety.Listening process characteristics covers lacking integrating information ability,necessary listening skills and the noise at the surroundings;Text difficulty level refer to fast speed of the speaker,unfamiliarity and no interest in some topics,how many times an item is read as well as long and complex sentence structures.This study has practical significance to the high school English listening teaching.First of all,from the survey,most repeater students in Experimental Senior Middle School experience moderate or high level of English listening anxiety.So all the teachers and students should be aware of this universal situation and take it seriously.Teachers should try to create a relaxing and active English learning environment,organize some more interesting activities.Teachers had better avoid negative evaluations to students and encourage them,especially the repeater students who are already under pressure from families,peers and themselves.Besides,in the listening process,listening training and psychological guidance need to be combined.The repeater students are special in mindset.Teachers should change the traditional teaching mode--three steps into putting students at the center of the class.Full attention should be paid to the return students’ emotion and emotional changes,and teachers treat students as friends in a sincere way.Finally,as for the difficulty of listening materials,students should try to adapt to the standard speed of the tape and the items which are only read once.Students are ought to be aware that only if they have improved,the so called difficulty in listening is not a case.