A Correlational Study Of Senior Secondary School Students'English Learning Enjoyment And English Classroom Anxiety

In the past two decades,emotional factors in learners' second language learning have attracted more attention in the field of Second Language Acquisition(Arnold,2000).However,until recent five years,studies began to focus on enjoyment and its relationship with anxiety(e.g.Dewaele & MacIntyre,2014,2016),and the results of the previous researches need to be validated for further theory construction.Meanwhile,unfortunately,less attention has been placed on the learners of English in China.In order to explore students' emotion in English learning,this current study selects 177 students in Grade 2 of a Middle School in Changchun and aims to explore(1)what are the general levels of students' English Learning Enjoyment(ELE);(2)what are the general levels of students' English Classroom Anxiety(ECA)and(3)what kind of relationship exists between ELE and ECA.The results show that(1)the participants have a relatively high level of ELE and the media value of “ELE-social” is higher than that of “ELE-private”;(2)the students' general ECA is under the median level,and the subconstructs of ECA manifests at different level.Among them,the highest media value is “Test Anxiety”,followed by “Other Anxieties”,while “Communication Apprehension” and “Fear of Negative Evaluation” ranks the third and fourth respectively;(3)there is a significant negative correlation between their ELE and ECA.Secondary school students' ELE has a significant negative correlation with the four dimensions of ECA,and has the highest correlation with “Test Anxiety” and the lowest correlation with “Fear of Negative Evaluation”.Between the two dimensions of ELE,the correlation coefficient between ECA and “ELE-private” is higher,while the correlation coefficient between ECA and “ELE-social” is lower.According to the correlational analysis,students who have a higher sense of ELE have a lower level of ECA.Therefore,the level of ECA can be reduced through improving the students' ELE.In the end,some implications for teaching and learning are put forward:(1)establish personal charm and cultivate personal characters so that students can go from “loving teachers” to “loving learning”;(2)carry out cooperative learning and strengthen communication between peers;(3)design various classroom activities and create a relaxed and pleasant teaching environment;(4)enhance internal learning motivation and stimulate internal driving force;(5)learn to balance ELE and ECA and find appropriate learning strategies.