Study Of High School Foreign Language Anxiety And English Level

Foreign language anxiety is fear or apprehension occurring when a learner is expected to perform in the target language. In recent years, a good deal of research has been devoted to the study of foreign language anxiety in that anxiety is considered to be one of the most important affective factors in language learning. So far, researchers not only have defined and categorized foreign language anxiety, but also have made clear its impact on the learning of the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Although the conclusion is not unanimous, one point has been generally acknowledged: among the four skills, speaking has the most intimate relationship with foreign language anxiety.Based on findings from relevant studies, this research is made to a subject sample of 158 students from two different levels of senior high schools using Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale(FLCAS) and oral test as the research instruments. With the help of advanced statistical method, this research not only reveals a global outlook of senior high school students' foreign language aniety, but also scientifically weighs the relationship between foreign language anxiety and oral proficiency. Apart from that, this research also tries to discover the reasons of the emergence of anxiety in oral performance by the adoption of qualitative methods such as observation and interview.The results indicate that, compared with the students from the top school, the students from common school show a relatively higher level of foreign language anxiety; there is no obvious difference in foreign language anxiety concerning gender in both schools; there is significant negative correlation between foreign language anxiety and subjects' oral scores in both schools; no matter what the foreign language anxiety level is, it has no positive influence on oral performance and the higher the anxiety level is, the greater the negative influence is on oral performance. It is also discovered that factors like classroom activities, teaching methods, language competence, personality and assessment methods may contribute a lot to anxiety in oral performance.According to the results, implication of the findings is discussed and anxiety-reduction measures are formulated: teachers should properly arrange collaborative learning for the students; teachers should efficiently capitalize on the class to provide more comprehensible input, maximize opportunities for students to practice, help students enlarge their vocabulary, and consciously develop students' communicative strategies; teachers should abandon severe error-correction or excessive negative feedback, and assess students' performance in a positive way so as to improve students' ability of English speaking.Besides, limitation of this research is pointed out and further research plan is raised out finally.