The Correlation Between English Speaking Self-concept And English-speaking Anxiety Of Senior High School Students

As the most influential language,English is always at the heart of globalization trend,therefore,many researchers attached great importance to effective teaching and learning English.With the introduction of Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis,more and more researchers realized the significance of psychology elements to language learning.As a result,the great breakthrough was made thanks to the combination of psychology and pedagogy,in which academic anxiety and academic self-concept are the most representative examples.This study,based on the theoretical foundation of affective filter hypothesis,combining academic anxiety and academic self-concept,aims to explore the current overall situation of English speaking anxiety and English speaking self-concept for senior high school students and the correction between these two elements.Overall,the research adopted a quantitative method with two questionnaires,which are English Speaking Self-concept Questionnaire and English Speaking Anxiety Questionnaire for Senior High School Students.These two questionnaires are adapted from two dimensions of ASQHSS developed by Wang Chuming & Pan Wei and Foreign Language Classroom Speaking Anxiety Scale designed by Apple respectively.Both scales are proved to be with high reliability after the pilot study.The research is designed to answer three questions:1.Do the students in Senior high school experience English speaking anxiety in classroom? If so,what is the level of this anxiety?2.What is the current situation of students’ English Self-Concept in senior high school?3.What is the relationship between English Speaking Self-Concept and EnglishSpeaking Anxiety in classroom?After conducting the research on 300 senior high school students in Jiangxi Province during academic year 2020-2021,the result proves to be: 1)these senior high school students suffer from a relatively high level of English speaking anxiety in the classroom;2)the participants possess only a comparatively medium level of overall English Self-concept,which means students are more inclined to put a negative evaluation to their English speaking ability or pronunciation;3)there is a medium but negative relationship correlation between English speaking Self-concept and English speaking anxiety in the classroom,indicating that the more positive of English Speaking Self-concept these students feel,less anxious they will be when they are speaking English.Based on the above investigation results,the author comes up with some pedagogical suggestions in chapter five for both teachers and students.Firstly,teachers should commit themselves to creating a collaborative classroom environment that can facilitate learning,and weakening teachers’ dominant position in the classroom.At the same time,teachers should foster students’ positive understanding of their English speaking performance by evaluating them with positive feedback.As for students,treating comments and evaluations from others as positively as possible is an effective way to improve English speaking.