A Study On The Correlation Between Classroom Anxiety And Oral Performance

The thesis is devoted to the correlation between foreign language anxiety phenomenon and English oral performance in professional college English classrooms in China. 124 freshmen at Jinling Institute of Technology completed the background questionnaires and took part in the adapted FLCAS type assessment. Based on the oral language classroom experiment, this empirical study mainly deals with the following:First of all this thesis briefly reviews the previous and current research in the domain of affective variables and foreign language anxiety. Inspired by the relevant fruitful research results in language anxiety, the study tries to examine non-English major students' foreign language anxiety levels in college English classrooms. Secondly, on the basis of the research questions, this investigation is made by the instruments of questionnaires and interviews as well as classroom observations. On one hand, the results indicate that some levels of anxiety are really present in English classroom, and anxiety has a significant negative influence on language performance, but there is no statistically significant gender difference as far as classroom anxiety is concerned according to the data. Furthermore, foreign language speaking anxiety is found to be negatively related to oral performance. The communicative way of teaching is more effective than the traditional teacher-centered method in reducing students' anxiety in language class. On the other hand, the thesis describes the different manifestations and the major sources of foreign language anxiety reported by the sample and the influence of teachers and teaching process on students' anxiety factors. Then the solutions to alleviating anxiety are presented from the students' perspective and some useful teaching strategies are also offered. Finally, the writer sums up the main ideas of this study, provides the answers to the research questions, describes its theoretical significance and practical value to the present college English teaching and learning, points out its limitations and finds out what is still left to be done for further study.