An Investigation On Speaking English Anxiety And Its Influencing Factors Among Higher Vocational College Freshmen

As one of the important emotional factors affecting foreign language teaching,anxiety is highly valued by language researchers and foreign language teachers.Many studies on foreign language anxiety show that speaking language anxiety is the most prominent manifestation of foreign language anxiety among learners.Based on a lot speaking English anxiety related literature,this study takes pedagogical humanism,psychological anxiety theory and linguistic affective filter hypothesis as the theoretical basis,and based on Horwitz’s foreign language classroom anxiety scale,combining with the characteristics of higher vocational students develop the higher vocational freshmen speaking anxiety scale as a research tool.The questionnaire survey and semi-structured interview are comprehensively used to discuss the speaking English anxiety of 2019 higher vocational college freshmen in our school and its influencing factors.This study intends to explore the following three questions:(1)What is the overall situation and degree of freshmen’s speaking English anxiety?(2)Vocational college freshmen show obvious differences in entrance channels,student sources,nationality,English scores and other aspects.What is the relationship between these differences and their anxiety in speaking English?(3)What factors affect freshmen’s speaking English anxiety?What are the differences between them in the degrComprehensive analysis of questionnaires and interviews,this study finds that:First,freshmen of the pre-school department of 2019 have a high level of anxiety in speaking English as a whole,and there are great individual differences.Most of the students in our school have medium or high anxiety in speaking English,but very few have low anxiety.Second,the entrance channels,student sources and English scores of the class of 2019 students in our school have significant differences in their speaking English anxiety,while the ethnic groups have no significant differences in their speaking English anxiety.Thirdly,students’ speaking English anxiety is affected by different sources of speaking English anxiety,and its influence degree is different.The order of their influence on speaking English anxiety was as follows:communicative confidence>exam expectation and evaluation>teacher behavior and attitude>own ability and requirements>classroom activities and environment>students’ response and evaluation.Fourthly,other influencing factors include teaching environment and teaching methods,teachers and learners themselves.Among them,learners’ own factors have the greatest influence on speaking English anxiety.Fifthly,teachers should choose teaching strategies according to different factors affecting speaking English anxiety and practical speaking English teaching,so as to improve the effect of speaking English teaching.Through the research of this study,it expands the research scope of speaking English anxiety in the special group of vocational college freshmen,makes up the gap and shortage of relevant research scope,and further enriches and improves the research on speaking English anxiety.It provides an effective reference for relieving freshmen’s anxiety about speaking English and for teaching specking English in theory and practice.