Alleviating Second Language Anxiety Within Social Constructivist Model

Since the 1970s, with the development of psychology, affective factors raised to a prominent position. Among many affective factors, language anxiety is a hot topic. Foreign language study in every aspect gets more attention recently. However, traditional language teaching and learning has been established in China for a very long time. It has already deeply rooted in both teachers'and students'hearts. Study shows that language anxiety is common among students and the traditional teaching methods increase students'language anxiety. Language anxiety does prohibit students'language study. The present situation of language teaching and learning in China is ready for reforming.Based on these relations between social constructivist model and its functions of reducing language anxiety, the author proposed a social constructivist model to reduce language anxiety. The author's social constructivist model is a teaching and learning model that built upon social constructivist theories. According to this model, in an interactive teaching and learning environment, based on the learners'feeling and personal needs, the teacher works as a mediator rather than a dominator to lead students to construct their own knowledge system actively.Concerning this problem, the author tries to carry out an experiment to do a study to solve this problem and to reduce students'language anxiety. The author proposed a social constructivist model to reduce language anxiety. The author has two hypotheses. The first one is that language anxiety does exist among students in high schools. The second one is that it can be reduced under social constructivist model. The experiment was carried out in Datong No.1 Middle School. The subjects are a hundred and two second-grade senior high school students. There are two classes. The experimental class has fifty students and the control class has fifty-two students. They almost all study English for about four years. The experiment was carried out during their English classes. This experiment used Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) as the questionnaire to investigate language anxiety among students. In additions, the author also interviewed two students and the teacher from the experimental class.After the experiment, the author analyzed data of the questionnaire and also the interviews. The experiment's results show that language anxiety does exist among students at high schools and the social constructivist model can help students to reduce their language anxiety, which in turn can help students in their foreign language learning.