A Study On The Impact Of Oral English Anxiety On Oral Production In Senior High School Students

Since the 1970 s,as the focus of language teaching research has shifted from "how to teach" to the "how to learn",the individual factors that lead to the difference of the learning results have attracted more and more researchers’ attention,and the influence of second language learners’ emotional factors on second language acquisition gradually becomes an important research field.Foreign language anxiety refers to the related emotional status in the specific environment of foreign language learning,such as mental stress,fear,excessive melancholy and etc.As an important factor affecting language learning,foreign language anxiety plays an important role in language learning of second language learners.As a result,more and more scholars have paid their attention to the study of foreign language learning anxiety and gradually penetrated into four basic skills: listening,speaking,reading and writing.But throughout the studies at home and abroad,those which are about oral English anxiety are quite less than other anxieties.And those studies are basically about college students’ oral English Anxiety.However,the high school period is an important stage for the growth and development of second language learners.How oral English anxiety affects oral English proficiency and reasons that cause oral English anxiety deserve our thorough investigation and research.This study selected 285 senior high school students from a key senior high school in Jiangsu province as the subjects of the questionnaire survey(98 Senior Students,95 senior sophomore students,92 senior three students)and 10 students are selected as the interviewees randomly.With the help of questionnaire,oral test and interviews,this study explores the impact of oral English anxiety on oral production in high school students.Besides,this study explores whether high and low levels of oral English anxiety differ in terms of oral performance.This study also explores whether different genders and grades may have an influence on oral English anxiety.At the same time,the study tries to find out the reasons why high school students are anxious about oral English expression.The results of the questionnaire show that oral English anxiety do exists amonghigh school students.Gender difference has no effect on oral English anxiety,but there is a significant grade difference.The higher the grade,the higher degree of oral English anxiety the second language learners hold.Besides,there is a negative correlation between oral English anxiety and English oral production.The higher the degree of oral English anxiety,the greater the negative impact on oral English performance there is.Through interviews,the vast majority of interviewees say that they feel anxious when speaking English.The influence factors mainly include internal and external aspects.Internal reasons include students’ language ability,character,and fear of negative evaluation.The external reasons include classroom atmosphere,teachers’ teaching methods and language factors.Based on the above research results,some practical teaching suggestions to alleviate oral English anxiety of senior high school students are put forward: First,make rational use of affective strategies and create positive emotional experience to increase students’ learning enthusiasm and reduce students’ oral English anxiety.Second,use the teaching strategy of lexical chunks,encourage students to read the word block as the smallest unit and read more and more to accumulate vocabulary,improve pronunciation and cultivate sense of language and ability of thinking in English.Third,advocate the method of oral English learning communication to improve the ability of oral expression,and use the collective learning model to develop students’ social strategies.Fourth,abandon direct error correction to alleviate oral English anxiety and adopt positive evaluation to promote the development of senior high school students’ oral English ability.