The Effects Of Activities-based Approach On English Learning Anxiety Of Sports Major Students

Foreign Language Anxiety has been considered as one of the most important affective barriers in language learning.And foreign language learning anxiety has been the topic of a growing body of researches.In Chinese context,students learning English as a second/foreign language and they are usually vulnerable to English learning anxiety.Especially among sports major students,the phenomenon of English learning anxiety is more serious.So language teachers should adopt purely learners-centered teaching methods.And a low anxiety and supportive learning environment should be created inside the classrooms.Based on the relevant theories of activities-based approach and foreign language anxiety,the author conducts a study on the effectiveness of activities-based approach in alleviating sports major students’ anxiety in English learning and aims to answer the following research questions:(1)What is the current situation of sports major students’ anxiety in English learning?(2)What effects will activities-based approach have on English learning anxiety of sports major students?(3)What effects will activities-based approach have on the English learning anxiety of different genders among sports major students?One semester’s teaching experiment is conducted in He Xi University in Gansu Province.The participants are 110 students from two innate classes of second year sports majors.The English learning anxiety questionnaire is applied for quantitative data collection and the final data is analyzed by the SPSS 22.0.The semi-structured interview is applied for qualitative data collection,twelve students are randomly selected from the experimental class to complement the quantitative results.The results of the present study indicate:(1)In the present situation,the sports major students were experiencing significant English learning anxiety.Among three categories of English learning anxiety,communication anxiety is the dominant factor affecting sports major students,followed by fear of negative evaluation.Male students had significantly higher levels of English learning anxiety than females.(2)The activities-based approach can effectively alleviate sports major students’ English learning anxiety,especially for alleviating communication anxiety and fear of negative evaluation.(3)The activities-based approach has great positive effect on alleviate both male and female sports major students’ English learning anxiety,and especially best for male students.The limitations and implications of the present study are also presented,which hope to find out some theoretical and practical suggestions on alleviating sports major students’ English learning anxiety,and give some enlightenments and implications to English teachers as well as English teaching revolution of the general university/college in China.