A Qualitative Analysis Of Student And Teacher Factors Impacting Secondary Vocational School Students’ English Classroom Anxiety

Foreign language classroom anxiety（FLCA）or English classroom anxiety（ECA）,happening in classroom settings and exerting a great influence on students’ English learning,has aroused increasing interest from scholars abroad and domestically.However,most researches just focus on college students or students of compulsory education.Secondary vocational school students do not get sufficient attention.Based on Affective Filter Hypothesis and Humanistic Psychology,this study attempts to adopt the Grounded Theory to deal with the following research questions from bottom to up:1)What are student-related factors in secondary vocational school students’ English classroom anxiety?What are the categories of student-related factors?2)What are teacher-related factors in secondary vocational school students’ English classroom anxiety?What are the categories of teacher-related factors?The qualitative research method is adopted including focused writing,semi-constructed interviews and classroom observations.After a twelve-week English learning,a questionnaire consisting of basic information and focused writing part is conducted among 201 first-year students in a secondary vocational school to find out the factors affecting their English classroom anxiety.Students’focused writing materials are input into NVivo 12 to form 382 fragments.After open coding,11 individual nodes,5 peer nodes and 9 teacher nodes are subsequently constructed,and then they are further classified into 4 individual themes,2 peer themes and 3 teacher themes after axial coding.Through selective coding,these themes are eventually categorized into student factors（including individual and peer ones）and teacher factors,which helps construct a model of impacting factors of English classroom anxiety of secondary vocational school students.Besides,interviews and classroom observations are utilized.Five boys and five girls with different English levels,whose focused-writing essays are regarded valid are selected to participate in the interviews.Two English teachers are chosen to take part in classroom observations.The whole process of both is recorded and then transcribed into English for further analysis.The detailed findings are demonstrated as follows:First,student-related factors mainly cover two broad categories:individual factors and peer factors.Through open coding,11 individual free nodes are obtained,including Awful Listening,Poor Speaking,Inadequate English Vocabulary,Terrible Grammar,Weak Foundation,Lack of Proper Preview and Review,Loss of Concentration,Novel Study Modes,Unsuccessful Experience,Nonconfidence and Introversion or Social Phobia.Then they are further abstracted into 4 themes after axial coding,which are English Foundation,Learning Attitude and Methods,Learning Experience and Personalities.Among them,English Foundation plays the most influential role.Five peer-related free nodes are formed by means of open coding.They are Disturbing,Mocking,Active Participation in Class,Efficient Accomplishment of Assignments and Fluent English Presentations,which are further categorized into two codes after axial coding:Negative Behaviors and Positive Behaviors.The data prove that Positive Behaviors exert a more significant part.Secondly,9 free nodes related with teachers are identified after open coding is first used,including Answering Questions,English Dictation,English Presentation,Exercise Completion,Group Discussion,Emotion Feedback,Information Feedback,Speaking Speed and English Analysis,which are further classified into 3 types through axial coding.They are Organization of Classroom Activities,Feedback and In-class Teaching.Among them,Organization of Classroom Activities is the most prominent impacting factor.In view of these findings,some pedagogical implications are put forward both for teachers and students.First,consolidating students’ English foundation and fostering their core competence should be the focus of secondary vocational school English teaching in the future.Additionally,it is essential for teachers to design multi-modal classroom activities for students with different levels to alleviate their English classroom anxiety.For students,they should learn to deal with friendly competition and appreciate their peers in an objective way.