Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety And The Development Of The Middle School Students' Oral Communicative Ability

Since 1970s, researchers abroad have been conducting studies on language anxiety, which is fear or apprehension occurring when a learner is expected to perform in a second or foreign language. It ranks high among factors influencing language learning, regardless of whether the setting is informal (learning language outside the classroom) or formal (in the language classroom). It is not a just case of general classroom anxiety being transferred to the foreign language learning but a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process. Researches have shown that language anxiety is a predictable success in language class and it affects all the three stages (i.e. the input stage, the processing stage, and the output stage) of cognitive processing in second language acquisition or learning. These studies have also shown persistent negative correlation among foreign language learning anxieties, foreign language learning achievement, self-perceived proficiency, attitude and motivation. In the recent years, many teachers and researchers have paid increased attention to learners' affective variables, shifting from the focus on the way the teacher teaches to the way the student learns. And foreign language anxiety is agreed to be one of the most important factors in this aspect, also, it has some negative influences on the development of the students' oral ability.In China, researchers and teachers have taken advantage of the theories and achievements of language anxiety in western countries for reference. Quite a number of research studies on English learning anxiety have been conducted in the Chinese context. But the subjects of most of these studies are undergraduates, graduates, English majors or non-English majors in universities or colleges. Few studies have...