Language Anxiety Of Suburban Senior Middle School Students And Its Countermeasures

Since the 1950s, when scholars realized that both affect and cognition are important in language learning, the efforts to focus on affect have been made. Among all the affective variables, the affective influence of the anxiety in the language learning field is paid much more attention to. Language anxiety is linked directly to performing in the garget language. It is obvious that language anxiety plays an important role in language learning. Since anxiety is quite of the affective factors that most pervasively obstructs English learning, and in China, many researches have been carded out in colleges as well as in middle schools in cities, so the writer chooses the language anxiety of suburban senior middle schools as the core of her investigation.This study aims to take 256 students from two suburban senior middle schools in Lianyuan, Hunan Province into consideration, hoping to find out the relationship between language anxiety and their English learning achievements, and at the same time to explore the sources of their anxiety and the ways to diminish it so as to improve the students' efficiency of learning English. The instruments and research methods adopted in this study are scaling (the modified Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale is used), a personal information questionnaire, an open-ended questionnaire, flee talks, SPSS and so on.After the investigation, we get the following major findings:(1) In suburban senior middle schools, students' language anxiety is negatively correlated with their English learning achievements, that is, the higher levels of language anxiety they have, the lower their marks are;(2) Language anxiety has a strong influence on students' language skills, especially on listening and speaking;(3) Besides students' personality factors, there are significant differences between gender, family background in language anxiety and English learning results. The male students have higher levels of language anxiety than the female students; the anxiety level of the students from rural areas is higher than that of students from urban areas;(4) The sources that cause language anxiety are various, including weak knowledge foundation, lack of risk-taking spirit, poor sense of competition, over-expectations from parents, heavy school load and so on.Based on the findings, the writer puts forward some useful suggestions to English teachers as well as students in order to reduce the learners' language anxiety, which can be concluded as follows:(1) Strategies for reducing language anxiety in listening and speaking;(2) Application of cooperative learning; (3) Suggestions for students;(4) Suggestions for teachers.English teachers as well as English learners should pay more attention to learners' language anxiety, realize its sources and adopt certain strategies to reduce language anxiety in order to create a relaxed learning atmosphere, develop the students both in cognitive and affective sides and so as to improve the quality of English teaching and learning in suburban senior middle schools.