On Language Anxiety Of Learning In Junior Middle Schools

Affective factors in education are more and more valued with the growth of humanistic psychology and whole-person education and putting forward the famous Affective Filter hypothesis of Kreshen (1985).Through many years practical speaking teaching, the author finds out students' language anxiety affect heavily language learning. Anxiety is quite possibly the affective factor that most pervasively obstructs the learning process, so how to reduce students'language anxiety in the course of speaking teaching is worth studying. It is associated with feelings of uneasiness, frustration, self-doubt, apprehension, or worry (Arnord 1999:8); Anxiety, as it has been studied in the psychological domain, plays an important affective role in the second language acquisition (Brown 2002:141).The relationship between anxiety and language learning is complicated. It is not always clear how foreign language anxiety comes into being. But under most of the conditions, learners'anxiety is not only related to the internal factors (self-esteem, tolerance of ambiguity) but also to the external elements (classroom speaking activities, the methodology of teachers). Researchers have confirmed that a variety of affective variables such as motivation, self-confidence and anxiety are related to success in second language learning, among these affective variables, anxiety has been considered a key affective one. As soon as anxiety is present in the classroom, there is an oppressive effect. Anxiety makes us tense and dreadful and thus contributes to poor performance; this immediately in turn creates more anxiety and even worse performance.Although anxiety is a major obstacle to language learning, it can be diminished. Therefore, this thesis aims at studying the reasons of language anxiety, suggestions to reduce language anxiety, fostering teachers'awareness of language anxiety and helping students to deal more effectively with language anxiety, so to speak English more fluently. This thesis consists of four chapters:Chapter one briefly introduces literature review of language anxiety. It is about the researches on language anxiety abroad and at home, introducing definition, classification, and signs of language anxiety. Chapter two presents the main causes of language anxiety, at least two main roots of language anxiety can be identified. Chapter three introduces suggestions to reduce language anxiety. In the fourth chapter, this thesis attempts to provide a case study of teaching oral English in Jiangsu Province, which is about reducing language anxiety is implicated in the course of speaking activities. By the end of this thesis, the author draws a conclusion and points out the research shows real meaning in practical learning and teaching.