Anxiety Of Middle School Students' English Learning And Its Countermeasures

English,learning is a rather complicated process. It is influenced not only by the linguistic characteristics of English itself, but also by some other factors. Among these factors, anxiety stands out as one of the main blocking affective factors for students' effective language learning. Research indicated that anxiety could interfere with the acquisition, retention and production of the new language (Maclntyre & Gardner 1991). Research also indicated that almost one half of all English learners experienced a startling level of anxiety (Campbell & Ortiz 1991). Furthermore, Crookall and Oxford (1991) reported that serious language anxiety might cause other related problems with self-esteem, self-confidence, risk-taking ability, and ultimately hampered proficiency in foreign language.Anxiety is one of the abnormal moods (Wang Yinquan, Wan Yushu 2001). Generally speaking, anxiety is defined as a state of uneasiness and apprehension caused by the anticipation of something threatening. Foreign language learning is a specific situation, which is full of ego-threats that are likely to cause anxiety. The nervous and fearful psychology of Chinese middle school students in foreign language learning is very obvious (liu Xuehui 1989) . This thesis aims at to study the English learning anxiety state of a sample of minority middle school students in Western Hunan, with the hope of finding the main anxiety-generating factors of minority middle school students in that region and hence overcoming passive influence of anxiety more effectively and further improving English teaching and learning.In order to understand English learning anxiety among middle school students who live and study in the underdeveloped minority region in Western Hunan, the sample was taken from the city of Jishou, mainlyconsulting Hoiwitr et al (1986) The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scales (FLCAS) combined with my own experience and intuition as both a foreign language learner and a foreign language teacher, we designed a questionnaire that consisted of 40 questions with total scores of 200, including both personality dimensions and situational ones. Adopting psychology's instrumental method and interviews, this thesis investigated the situation of middle school students' foreign language learning anxiety in Jishou, Hunan Province. We conducted our investigations in three different types of schools at the same time in May, 2004. While investigating, we mainly used this questionnaire, supplemented by listening to lectures and conducting interviews with teachers and students.This study examines and analyses the general levels and structural characteristics of minority middle school students' foreign language learning anxiety in Western Hunan, the relationship between students' English grades and anxiety, and the primary anxiety-generating factors. Through several levels of analysis and comparison, we found the results. The English learning anxiety situation of minority junior students in Western Hunan is: the mean anxiety score of 401 students was 109.88, which made up 54.94% of the total scores of the questionnaire; this showed that the students' total anxiety levels of foreign language learning in that region were relatively high. Results showed that there were no obvious differences of anxiety levels among the three different types of urban and rural schools, and that there existed no obvious differences among different grades with the exception of Grade One. The English learning anxiety level of Grade One was obviously higher than that of the other two grades. After conducting a relational check between students' English grades and their language anxiety, we found that there existed obvious negative relationship, with the negative relationship between...