A Causal Analysis Of High Anxiety In English Listening For Junior Middle School Students

Among the four specific language skills, listening, speaking, reading,and writing, listening is the foundation of the other three skills and alsothe often-used communicative mode in daily life. However, in dailyjunior high school English teaching, the author finds that in Englishlistening class and English listening test, most of the students havedifferent levels of anxiety, some of whom even have high anxiety inEnglish listening. The high anxiety in listening has triggered a series ofnegative psychological phenomena, such as fatigue, tension, and fear,which seriously hinder the normal study of students’ Englishlistening.Throughout the study of English listening in China and abroad,most researches are focused on college students and senior highschool students, and the theme of these researches on the junior highschool students’ high anxiety in English listening is not seen to often yet.The result is that the problems from high anxiety among junior studentsremain in their listening activities. How to reduce the junior high schoolstudents’ high anxiety in English listening and improve English listeningteaching effect is of helpful significance and value for the junior highschool English teachers. Therefore, this paper tries to seek and analysethe causes that lead to the high anxiety of junior high school students’English listening, and look for possible countermeasures that may helpreduce the high anxiety in their English listening. In order to ensure thevalidity of the test, this research involves as many as183Junior One andJunior Two students in a Shanghai junior middle school where the authorteaches now. The experiment began in September2011, ended inJanuary2012, covering a whole semester of four months. There are tworesearch instruments in the main: questionnaire and English listening test.After studying the relevant content of Ye Renmin and Rockling’s Chinese edition of worries about TAI anxiety scale and emotional scale,and with the combination of our students’ actual study situation andcharacteristics in concern, the author designes the “English ListeningClass Anxiety Scale” and the “English Listening Test Anxiety Scale” tomake a differentiation between the high anxiety in English listening classand that in English listening test. The author has respectively analysedthe junior high school students’ anxiety from the English listening classand English listening test as well. In each aspect, the author has alsomade investigations from three further perspectives, multiple analysiscontrast from the students’ gender, different levels of listening result,and different grades of subjects’ learning achievements. Based on thedata analysis of the questionnaire and the listening test scores, theauthor has found that:1) In English class listening, there are threestudents who have high anxiety, accounting for1.64%in the totalnumber, while in English listening test, there are16students having highanxiety, accounting for8.74%in the total number. It is believed that thestimulation of test brings a certain degree of discomfort, and thenumber of students with high anxiety in English listening test is obviouslyhigher than that in English listening class.2) There are sixteen studentswith high anxiety in English listening test, two being boys and fourteengirls. In comparison and analysis, the author found that the differencewas related to the psychological and physiological characteristicsbetween boys and girls in general.3) Among the sixteen students withhigh anxiety in English listening test, there are six of A level learningachievements, eight of B level and two of C level. After a contrastiveanalysis, the author found the learning achievement difference isconnected with the characteristics of students in different listeninglevels, especially in connection with the English vocabulary andrelevant English structure mastered by students in different listeninglevels.4) Among the sixteen students with high anxiety in English listening test, there are twelve in Junior One, and four in Junior Two. It is foundthat this grade difference is influenced by the students’ different agesand the psychological andphysiological characteristics. It is alsoinfluenced by the English vocabulary and structure mastered bystudents in different grades. In view of the above findings, the author,from linguisitc and non-linguistic aspects out of her teachingexperience, puts forward some considerations about possiblecountermeasures. The author argues that changing the daily teachingmethods and improving listening methods and skills is of priorimportance, whereas adjusting students’ understanding of listeningprocess, taking part in physical exercises, and creating harmoniousclassroom atmosphere is of indispensable and supportive importance.The author has spent three and a half months on the tentative practiceof these strategies when doing the research. It has, at the same,showed that these measures for reducing the high anxiety have certaineffect, but of course they have not been proved effective by relevantlong-term research. It can be expected that greater effects shall beachieved if further research is done by those who have the samesentiment about the issue, myself not excluded of course, some day inthe future.