A Study Of Junior High School Students’ Speaking Anxiety In English Class

Anxiety is one of the affective factors that hinder students’ learning in the process of language learning.Through the study of the current situation and literature review,it is found that among the four skills of listening,speaking,reading and writing,speaking can most cause students’ anxiety.Moreover,the researches on English speaking anxiety at home and abroad mainly aimed at college students and senior high school students,and there are fewer researches studying junior high school students,which makes oral English teaching always be a weak point in foreign language teaching in China.However,students’ listening and speaking are the English teaching focus and priority among the four skills in this period.Therefore,in order to improve English teaching and promote Chinese cooperation and communication with foreign countries,it is particularly important to study the current situation of junior high school students’ speaking anxiety in English class.This paper takes the speaking anxiety of junior high school students in English class as the research topic.The purpose is to find out the existing problems through the investigation and analysis of the current situation of junior high school students’ speaking anxiety in English class.Some relevant suggestions from the perspective of teachers and students will be put forward to alleviate the level of speaking anxiety and improve students’ English communicative competence.Basing on Krashen’s affective filtering hypothesis,Swain’s output hypothesis and humanistic theory,the author takes 224 junior students in a middle school in Guangzhou as the research subjects and adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods,conducting an investigation on the situation of English speaking anxiety of junior students of Grade Seven and Grade Eight.The dimensions of the questionnaire include fear of communication,self-cognition,learning attitude,teacher factors and peer factors.The data are put into the statistical software SPSS24.0 for data analysis.And the qualitative research is to randomly select 4 students from each of the three anxiety levels,a total of 12 students for interview and classroom observation,and conduct further analysis in combination with teacher interview,which aims to supplement the quantitative research.This research explores the following three questions:(1)What is the overall situation of junior high school students’ speaking anxiety in English class like?(2)What factors are related to students’ anxiety while speaking English in class?(3)What level of anxiety is conducive to motivate students to practice speaking English?The results of the research indicate as follows:(1)The overall English speaking anxiety of junior students is at the moderate level.Male students are more anxious than the female students.(2)Among the factors causing English speaking anxiety,the teacher factor has the greatest influence,followed by self-cognition and fear of communication,and finally peer factors and learning attitude.Teachers’ error correction method,personality and ways of feedback,students’ lack of vocabulary and confidence,shyness and unfamiliarity with English logic in communicating as well as the stress and disrespect from peers influence a lot on students’ speaking anxiety.(3)Moderate anxiety is helpful to stimulate students’ enthusiasm to practice speaking English.Basing on the research results,the author puts forward some suggestions from the perspective of teachers and students.For teachers,first,they should pay attention to the differences of students and teach students according to their aptitude.Second,the teacher should follow the principle of “step by step”.Then,their teaching methods should keep pace with the times.And finally they should establish a democratic and harmonious teacher-student relationship.For the students,first of all,they should correct their learning attitude and change their ideas.Then,it’s helpful to use communication strategies to overcome the fear of communication.Finally,they had better improve the awareness of autonomous learning.This paper aims to explore the causes of English speaking anxiety and put forward countermeasures to reduce students’ English speaking anxiety.At the same time,it points out that the deficiency of this study that the research object is relatively limited,which can not represent the overall situation of junior high school students’ English speaking anxiety.And the study fails to implement oral test to explore the relationship between oral test and students’ English speaking anxiety.In order to have a deeper understanding of English speaking anxiety,the author suggests that future studies should firstly ensure the representativeness of the research objects.Then use a variety of research methods to make the results more reliable,and finally expand the depth of the research to study English speaking anxiety from different aspects.