A Survey Of English Listening Anxiety Of Senior High School Students

Listening is one of the important ways of language input,and listening ability is very significant in international communication.The effectiveness of listening learning is influenced by a number of factors,emotional factors(such as anxiety)being one of the important ones.Scholars at home and abroad have conducted extensive research on the impact of anxiety on listening.However,most research on English listening anxiety focuses on college students,and few on senior high school students in ethnic minority areas.Therefore,this study takes a high school in Nanning,Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region as an example to study the status quo of English listening anxiety of senior high school students in ethnic minority areas.And it hopes that relevant suggestions are proposed to lower English listening anxiety of senior high school students.This study is based on Affective Filter Hypothesis and Krashen’s Input Hypothesis;quantitative and qualitative research methods are used together.A total of 401 students in Senior One and Senior Two of Nanning X High School are selected as research subjects of questionnaire,with 12 students and 8 English teachers as the interviewees.It aims to answer the following three questions:(1)What is the level of English listening anxiety of senior high school students?(2)Are there any differences in English listening anxiety of senior high school students in terms of grade?If so,what are they?(3)Are there any differences in English listening anxiety of senior high school students in terms of gender? If so,what are they?The findings of the study are revealed as follows:(1)Overall,the English listening anxiety of senior high school students is at the moderate level.To be specific,students suffer higher level of English listening anxiety in the dimensions of English input characteristics and listening strategies;but students experience lower level of English listening anxiety in the dimensions of background knowledge and confidence among the six dimensions.(2)There are significant grade differences in English listening anxiety of senior high school students.The level of English listening anxiety of students in Senior One is higher than that of students in Senior Two;the grade differences in the dimensions of background knowledge and English proficiency are more significant than that of other dimensions.(3)Overall,there are significant gender differences in English listening anxiety of senior high school students.The level of English listening anxiety of females is higher than that of males;the gender differences in the dimensions of confidence and negative evaluation are more significant than those of other dimensions.Finally,some suggestions for English listening teaching are put forward to lower English listening anxiety of senior high school students,and the prospects for future research on the basis of results are discussed.