A Study In Reducing Senior High School Students' English Classroom Anxiety Through Cooperative Learning

Related researches show that foreign language learning anxiety has a negative influence on the process of foreign language learning. So how to reduce foreign language learners'classroom anxiety has become one of the topics that draw much attention. It has important theoretical and practical values to reduce the students' English learning anxiety by introducing the cooperative learning to English classroom of senior high school.Firstly, the author tried to obtain clear information about the senior high school students' English learning anxiety and to establish the causes of the anxiety. The survey was carried out in a.senior high school in Shandong Province. The result of the survey indicates that there is a widespread and significant distribution of English language classroom anxiety among these students and they are experiencing comparatively high levels of English language classroom anxiety. The students with different anxiety levels also display differences in their English achievements. Then, based on the survey, two parallel classes were chosen from the six investigated classes as the experimental class in which CL was implemented and the control class in which the traditional teaching method was used to test if the CL is really helpful in reducing the students'English classroom anxiety and improving the students' English achievements. The test lasted for eight weeks. Data concerning the students'English language classroom anxiety and their achievements collected in the survey were established as the pretest. Eight weeks later the students'English language classroom anxiety levels and their English achievements were be tested again. All the data collected this time were treated as posttest.Data from both the pretest and posttest were treated together. Independent Samples T Test was made on the posttest data and Paired-Samples T Test was made between pretest and posttest. The correlation analysis between anxiety and achievement was also made.The result indicates that after the implement of CL the English language anxiety of the experimental class was reduced and the students'English was improved significantly. There is a significant difference between the pretest and posttest of the experimental class. However there is no significant difference between the pretest and posttest of the control class. So it is believed that CL can help to reduce English classroom anxiety and improve the learners'English achievements. There is a significant negative correlation between students'English anxiety and their English learning (achievements).