A Study On The Alleviation Of Foreign Language Anxiety Of College Students Through Group Work

Foreign language anxiety is one of the negative factors which often hinders the language studies of college students and affects their language learning efficiency. Students, who suffered from this problem, would not like to attend English class, feel nervous when asked to speak in front of class, and get very worried about the coming test, and the like. Based on the relevant theories of Cooperative Learning and language anxiety, the author puts forward an idea that to alleviate students'foreign language anxiety through Group Work in English classroom. In this semester-long experiment, the teacher employs group activities as the main teaching method, and presents them with group skills to better perform the tasks, which aims to help students alleviate their language anxiety, and build self-confidence in English learning. Two rounds of questionnaire are conducted at both the beginning and the ending of the experiment in the experimental and control groups. Based on experiments and data analysis, compared with the control group, this thesis proves that in college English teaching, esp. oral English, cooperative learning and group activities play an active and effective role in creating positive and relaxed atmosphere and alleviating students'language anxiety. Meanwhile, limitations and implications of the present study are also presented.