Foreign Language Anxiety Of High School Students

In the history of educational research, much attention had been paid to the cognitive process of foreign language learning rather than to the emotional factors functioning during the course of learning until recently, in the 1970s, a number of researches were undertaken on the emotional elements in foreign language teaching and learning. Educator should try to reveal the nature of foreign language teaching and learning form both the cognitive aspect and the emotional aspect in order to explore a scientific, efficient way of foreign language teaching.Anxiety is a state of apprehension, uncertainty, and fear resulting from the anticipation of a realistic or fantasized threatening event or situation, often impairing physical and psychological functioning. Students often feel nervous or fearful; some becomes weary of learning, even drop out. Foreign language anxiety, as one variable of the most important emotional factors, is a combination of many kinds of negative emotional states.In 2001, Ministry of Education issued English Curriculum Criterion, which puts special emphasis on the students' emotional factors. Therefore, the research on foreign language anxiety is of significant significance. Despite some conflicting findings, foreign language anxiety study has been gaining more attention in recent years and has given many inspirations to educators. However, any research has its own limitations. The research on foreign language anxiety is of no expectation on this point: some researches were under the western background; some were from the angle of college students. Very few related researches were set on high school students, especially on the high school student from China. So, based on some theories about foreign language anxiety and some results of the previous researches, the author investigates the perceived levels of anxiety experienced by a randomly-selected sample of high school foreign language students from a foreign language school and an ordinary high school, and makes a measurable analysis of theresults gathered in the investigation in relation to the students' foreign language anxiety in English learning, attempting to answer the following research questions:1) Is the level of foreign language anxiety on high school students significant?2) Are there any school difference and gender difference in the level of highschool students' foreign language anxiety?3) Is the foreign language anxiety correlated with high school students' English test performance? If yes, then4) What kind of correlation?The result of the investigation suggests:1) The level of foreign language anxiety on high school students is not significant.2) School differences and gender differences were found in the level of highschool students' foreign language anxiety, although not very significant.3) There is test performance correlation.4) And the correlation is negative.Form the findings of the research the author gives some suggestions:1) Be aware of foreign language anxiety.2) Take on affective techniques to alleviate debilitating feelings.3) Adopt innovative approaches.4) Insist on student-oriented approaches.