A Survey Of English Learning Anxiety Among Chinese Senior Middle School Students

Language anxiety, among all affective factors, is probably the most pervasive obstruction in second or foreign language learning. However, in Chinese senior middle schools, less attention is paid to English language anxiety in language learning. This paper presents the hypothesis that language anxiety is negatively correlated to English learning among Chinese senior middle school students.The research mainly focuses four aspects, including students'different levels of anxiety in EFL classroom, the relationship between language anxiety and English learning, potential sources of language anxiety and the effective strategies to reduce language anxiety.First of all, the thesis reviews the previous and current research on anxiety abroad and at home, and finds out its necessity and importance. Inspired by the previous research results in language anxiety, research methods such as questionnaire and casual talks with students are used in this study. A Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) designed by Horwitz (1986) is used to measure the anxiety level of senior middle school students, while open-ended questionnaire and casual talks are made used of so as to offer supplementary data to the results in the quantitative study. All the data and analyses have been processed by using SPSS15.0.Based on the above analysis, the results show that, in general, students are more or less interfered with language anxiety. Specifically, almost half of the senior middle school students are highly anxious and only a small number of students are lowly anxious. The most important finding in this study is that language anxiety is negatively correlated to the learners'English learning, which justified the hypothesis in the study. The study also showed that male students appear significantly more anxious than females.What's more, through theoretical deduction from other researchers and in means of qualitative study, the sources of English language anxiety of Chinese senior middle school students were seek out, which includes: over-expectations from parents, learners'risk-taking ability, unscientific beliefs, instructor-learner interaction, tolerance of ambiguity, self-esteem, and identification and culture shock and so on. Finally, in the study some strategies are proposed which are feasible and effective to reduce language anxiety: being a facilitator rather than a teacher or lecturer, creating relaxing and pleasant learning atmosphere, adopting cooperative learning model, using music and songs in English class, reducing test anxiety, changing learner beliefs about language learning, arousing learners'interest, reducing intrapersonal and interpersonal anxieties, and integrating language cultural teaching.Conclusions have drawn in this thesis as following: the hypothesis is true that language anxiety is negatively correlated to English learning among Chinese senior middle school students. English teachers should pay more attention to students'language anxiety in English learning, realize its potential sources and adopt some effective strategies to reduce language anxiety in order to improve the quality of English teaching and learning.