Anxiety And Language Learning

Since 1970s' the SLA research has shifted from teaching methods to the learning process.The foreign language anxiety(FLA),as one of the key affective variables,has gained its value.Large amounts of researches have been done to explore the relationship between language anxiety and language learning with various research methods.Horwitz and Cope(1986)interpreted the FLA "as a distinct complex of self-perceptions,beliefs,feelings,and behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process ",and describe three components of foreign language anxiety:communication apprehension,test anxiety,and fear of negative evaluation.FLCAS(foreign language classroom anxiety scale)has been developed by Horwitz and widely adopted by many researchers to measure learners 'foreign language anxiety.Aider searching related academic journals,I find most of the research results in language anxiety are either on college students or secondary students,few on pupils of the primary schools. In reality,FLA extensively exists in the language learning among those pupils.English teaching has been implemented to all 3^rs-6^thgraders from the academic year 2001,the critical period theory told us that the primary stage is the golden time for English learner,but their language achievement is also likely to be affected by the FLA,including being afraid of taking tests, making mistakes,negative evaluation and so on.Of course the anxiety-provoking sources might arouse from self-perception,parental pressure,teacher's instructing behavior,etc.This study aims to detect the language anxiety of 6^th-graders in the primary school;the correlation between the students' language anxiety-level and English speaking proficiency;the students' responses and suggestions regarding the sources and factors that cause their English learning anxiety in and out of the classroom.The subjects consist of 34 6^th-graders instructed by the researcher himself at YJS Primary school in the city of Tong Ling.The researcher carried out two questionnaires(FLCAS and 15 open-ended questions)to the 34 subjects.The students' English speaking proficiency scores,English examination results,audiotapes of semi-structured interview and video-tapes of classroom observation are collected for both quantitative analysis through SPSS 13.0 and qualitative analysis through data collection and sorting in this study.The research findings are summarized as follows:1.It is obvious that various language anxiety factors exist in 6^thgraders.2.There is a negative correlation between language anxiety and English speaking proficiency for the 6^th-graders. 3.There is a significant difference in English speaking proficiency among the three groups of students with different anxiety-levels for the 6^th-graders.More of the students with high anxiety-level tend to be low-achievers and more of the students with low anxiety-level tend to be high-achievers;more of the high-achievers tend to be students with lower anxiety-levels and more of the low-achievers tend to be students with high anxiety-level.4.Taking tests is regarded as one of the most serous causes that make the students anxious in their English learning.Several pedagogical implications were suggested based on the results,a)we should be aware of the necessity for the teachers to create less anxiety-provoking environment for the students' English learning;b)we can have the adoption of students' suggestions on less anxiety-provoking grouping of learning activities,such as whole-class activity;c)we should be aware of the possibility of modifying the evaluation considering the students' suggestions,such as games,to make them feel less anxious when being evaluated;d)we can use proper portion of Chinese to reduce the students' leaming anxiety when we instruct the class.It is hoped that the above mentioned suggestions can provide useful information for language teachers to become aware of FLA and to modify their instructional techniques so that the students may benefit from the low anxiety-provoking language learning situations in the classroom.