A Study On English Majors’Foreign Language Anxiety In Oral English Classroom

Foreign language classroom anxiety is found to be one of the affective factors that most pervasively block the foreign language learning process. It influences the input, comprehension and output of second language of language learners. Previous researches have revealed that language students have strong manifestation of anxiety when they are taking their oral class, thus most of them become afraid of speaking in foreign language and try to avoid doing this as possible as they can. Therefore, it turns out to be that the stronger their fear of speaking in foreign language is, the worse their oral performance is, and it becomes a vicious circle. As English majors, students are determined to learn English well, so they should overcome language anxiety to get better language performance. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that how to alleviate students’anxiety and agitate them to open their mouth to speak so as to get their oral performance improved is an urgent problem for language instructors to consider.The present study explores the effect of foreign language anxiety on English majors’ oral performance. It uses Elaine Horwitz, Michael Horwitz, and Cope’s theoretical model of foreign language anxiety, and Krashen and Swain’s second language acquisition theories as a research framework. The present study aims at bridging the gap between theoretical research findings and practical applications by enabling language instructors to identify the manifestations and sources of their students’foreign language anxiety. It also aims at providing language instructors with feasible and effective ways to deal with this educational problem in regular classroom setting.The instruments are a questionnaire-Horwitz’s Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) and an interview; the participants are60English majors and60non-English sophomores in Shaanxi Normal University. Data are analyzed with the aid of SPSS19.0. The present study focuses on the following aspects:the level of English majors’foreign language anxiety in their oral English class; the correlation between foreign language anxiety and students’oral achievement; the sources of English majors’ foreign language anxiety in oral English class; the implications of analysis of FLA on college oral English classroom teaching. The results of the study indicate the presence of foreign language anxiety in oral classroom, and show that English majors experience a slightly lower level of anxiety than non-English major students and there is a negative correlation between students’ level of anxiety and their oral performance. The implications of research findings for reducing anxiety in oral classroom are also discussed in the study. Based on the above findings, the author makes the following suggestions:building a relaxing environment, reducing oral classroom anxiety and arranging classroom activities according to students’need.