Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety And Teaching Strategies

To improve English learning and teaching, many teachers and researchers have paid increased attention to learners' affective variables, shifting from the focus on the way the teacher teaches to the way the student learns. And foreign language anxiety is agreed to be one of the most important factors in this aspect.This thesis sums up the previous and current research in the affective domain and finds out what is still left to be done. Inspired by the fruitful western research results in language anxiety, the author attempts to conduct an investigation on English language anxiety in the Chinese context, to have a full understanding of anxiety in EFL classroom, and to improve college students' learning of English.By means of a questionnaire, students' learning diaries, and interviews, the author finds that Chinese non-English majors experience anxiety in EFL classroom and foreign language anxiety interferes with their English learning. Through the analysis of the data the author examines the sources leading to foreign language anxiety. The study suggests that the problem of language anxiety is not only due to the learner but also to the language learning experience including the instructor and the methodology. After probing learners' different manifestations of foreign language anxiety, the author puts forward some teaching strategies to relax anxiety, which are able to help release students' learning anxiety in class and improve classroom-teaching quality. The thesis ends with a summary of this investigation, implications and limitations of the study, and suggestions for future research.