An Investigation Into Teacher-caused Anxiety In Senior High School English Classes

The relationship between anxiety and education has been studied throughout the world for years.With the development of humanistic psychology in 1960 s,affective factors in English teaching attracted much attention by scholars and researchers.As one of the major affective factors,English classroom learning anxiety commonly affects English learners has received increasingly academic concerns.However,there are various causes of English classroom learning anxiety,some are from the students themselves and their parents,while some are from the school and teachers.Among them,the teacher-caused anxiety is one of the major causes for students' learning anxiety.Thus,based on humanistic psychology and Krashen's affective filter hypothesis,this study intended to investigate the current situation of teacher-caused anxiety and the differences in some individual factors(student types,gender and English achievements)in senior high school English classes in Xi'an Foreign Language School.In this research,quantitative and qualitative research methods were used.Two hundred and five participants of six classes from senior two were invited to complete the questionnaire,and 36 students were interviewed.The two research questions addressed in the study are:1: What is the current situation of teacher-caused anxiety in senior high school English classroom?2: Are there any differences of teacher-caused anxiety in individual factors(student types,gender and students' English achievements)?The study found that the teacher-caused anxiety of senior high school students in Xi'an Foreign Language School was in the moderate level.However,there were significant differences in terms of the students types(arts and science);gender(male and female)and the students' English achievements.Science students,male students and students with lower English achievements have higher degree of teacher-caused anxiety than arts students,female students and students with higher achievements respectively.Based on the above findings,the study proposed some pedagogical implications for reducing the teacher-caused anxiety and some suggestions for future study were discussed.