A Study On The Effects Of Teachers’ Questioning On Senior High School Freshmen’s Learning Anxiety In English Class

In 2011,the new English Curriculum Standard of Senior High School formulated by the ministry of education emphasizes the cultivation of students’ comprehensive language use ability,and takes students’ language knowledge,language skills,emotional attitude,learning strategies and cultural awareness as the basis for the cultivation of comprehensive application ability.Among them,as one of the five goals,emotional attitude has attracted more and more attention of teaching researchers.Anxiety,as one of the most important affective factors,has a very important influence on learners’ foreign language learning.There are many factors that lead to students’ language anxiety,including teachers’ questions and students’ own factors.Compared with senior two and senior three students,freshmen in senior one are more likely to have anxiety due to the change of their learning environment.Therefore,in this context,this study investigates the influence of teachers’ questioning on students’ learning anxiety.At present,there are more and more researches on the influence of English teachers’ questioning on students’ anxiety at home and abroad,but the research object is lack of universality,there are more researches on junior high school students and college students,but there are less researches on senior high school students,especially senior one students.Therefore on the basis of previous studies,this study focuses on "what is the current situation of learning anxiety of freshmen in senior one’s English class? ” and“What are the effects of teachers’ ways of questioning,types of questions,waiting time and teachers’ feedback methods on students’ classroom anxiety? ” The research subjects are mainly about 110 senior students and 4 English teachers in a middle school in Shanxi Province.Based on Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis and Rogers’ humanistic psychology,these two questions are investigated by questionnaire,interview and classroom observation.The main conclusions are as follows:1.The anxiety of freshmen in senior high school is very common.The students experience different levels of anxiety in English class,and the level of anxiety is generallyhigher than the average level;2.The improper choice of teachers’ questions is easy to cause students’ anxiety.The conclusion drawn from the questionnaire survey is that reference type questions and open type questions are more likely to cause students’ anxiety than display type and closed type questions.However,from the perspective of student interviews,compared with closed and display questions,most senior high school students tend to answer reference and open questions,which shows that senior high school students have a psychological tendency to break through themselves;3.Different ways of teachers’ questioning will cause different levels of anxiety of students,among which random roll call is the most likely to cause high anxiety of students.Some students like the way of answering questions after discussion;4.The lack of waiting time after teachers’ questions is easy to cause students’ anxiety;5.Teachers’ negative feedback and improper correction are easy to cause students’ anxiety.Based on the above findings,this study puts forward some suggestions to reduce the classroom anxiety of freshmen in senior high school: strengthening communication with students,understanding the real needs of students,and constantly optimizing their own classroom questioning methods;using different levels of questions purposefully according to the characteristics of students and the actual teaching situation,and reasonably setting the proportion of open and closed,display and reference questions;according to the characteristics of the students and the atmosphere of the classroom,using various ways of asking questions flexibly;according to the difficulty of the questions,leaving enough time for the students to wait for answers;when giving feedback to the students,focusing on positive feedback,constantly improving the quality of feedback,and correcting the students in an appropriate way.At present,there are few studies on the influence of senior high school English teachers’ questioning on students’ anxiety in China.It is hoped that the findings of this study can help senior high school English teachers improve their understanding of foreign language anxiety,and provide improvement ideas for teachers to carry out English teaching and reduce students’ anxiety.