A Study On English Learning Anxiety Of Students With English Learning Difficulties In Ordinary High School

Foreign language learners’ emotional factors,especially their anxiety,have attracted much attention.Various studies have proved that foreign language learning anxiety has a significant impact on learners’ language acquisition.The increase of anxiety will have many negative effects.The new curriculum reform requires that attention be paid to students’ emotional attitudes,especially those with learning difficulties,in English teaching.Therefore,understanding the anxiety of students with learning difficulties and finding out the causes of anxiety can better help them alleviate anxiety and promote their physical and mental health.Basing on Krashen’s Emotional Filtering Hypothesis and Humanistic Psychology and Constructivist Theory,with Horwitz’s Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale,the author surveys on 220 second-year senior high school students with learning difficulties from No.8 Middle School of Laibin City.There are 33 items in the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale.The anxiety of students with learning difficulties can be understood from four dimensions: communication apprehension,test anxiety,negative evaluation anxiety and general anxiety.In addition,interview is used to study the anxiety of the students with learning difficulties in English learning.The purpose of this study is to explore the following questions:(1)What is the general anxiety situation of the students with learning difficulties in senior high schools?(2)What are the causes of the anxiety of students with learning difficulties? How to help students with learning difficulties to regulate anxiety?The results show that:(1)In the process of learning English,students with learning difficulties generally have high anxiety.On average,negative evaluation anxiety was the highest,followed by test anxiety,communication apprehension and general anxieties.(2)The survey finds that the causes of anxiety of students with learning difficulties are related to the following aspects.First,students with learning difficulties lack the understanding of anxiety.They also lack diligence in learning.Their personality and failure in good study habits can also lead to anxiety.Next,some teachers’ professional ethics needs to be improved.Teachers’ teaching methods are inflexible and the classroom atmosphere isn’t conducive to learning.They lack cooperation and some of them don’t provide comprehensible input for students with learning difficulties.Besides,schools don’t pay enough attention to them,and lack effective management of teachers and effective support for English teaching.And the evaluation method is single.(3)Basing on the above findings,the author puts forward to some countermeasures.For students,they should correctly understand anxiety.They should form good learning habits with teachers’ help and take part in learning activities to form good qualities.Besides,diligent learning is very essential.For teachers,they should improve their moral accomplishment,adopt appropriate teaching models and strategies and provide teaching resources suitable for students,and create a relaxed and harmonious English learning environment for students.Work should be united and cooperative.For schools and education departments,a good learning environment should be created at the school level;a scientific personnel and management system should be established;schools and education departments should offer effective help for English teaching and improve the comprehensive evaluation system for students.In addition,in the process of experiment and investigation,the author got inspiration,found shortcomings,and put forward to suggestions for follow-up related researches.