A Study Of Senior High School Students’ English Learning Anxiety In Class

Foreign Language Learning Anxiety is caused due to the uniqueness of the languagelearning process, and it is a complex combination of the learners’ self-perception, beliefs,feelings and behavior which emerge in the foreign language classroom. To understand causesof language learning anxiety of high school students and to propose a resolution haveimportant practical and theoretical significance. This study reviews the current foreignlanguage learning anxiety and foreign language learning classroom anxiety, and it usedstratified sampling method to select300students of Weihai No.1High School and based on"the Foreign Language Classroom Learning Anxiety Scale " written by Horwitz (referred toFLCAS), the author made the "High School Students Learning Foreign Language ClassroomAnxiety Questionnaire" and interviewed10students individually suffering from anxiety inorder to conduct a survey on the status of high school foreign language learning classroomanxiety. We believe that foreign language learning classroom anxiety is foreign languagelearning anxiety which is produced in foreign language learning process in foreign languagelearning classroom. Foreign language classroom anxiety consists of communication anxiety,fear of negative evaluation and test anxiety. From the questionnaire of six classes of WeihaiNo.1High School, we found that most of the students’ foreign language classroom anxietywere mild anxiety and middle-anxious, very anxious and no anxiety were12%and19%. Atthe same time, we used communication anxiety, negative evaluation fear, test anxiety, as wellas self-efficacy at the English classroom as the dependent variable, and used sex, grade,current English learning level, personality(intro/extro) of high school students as independentvariables, in order to made single factor analysis of variance to communication anxiety,negative fear, test anxiety, as well as English classroom self-efficacy and gender and otherfactors. We get the following results.1） Girls, relative to boys, were more prone to produceforeign language classroom anxiety. When it comes to the negative evaluation fear, girls aremore likely to suffer from the disappointment and negative psychological expectations thanboys. Boys and girls have similar scores in test anxiety.2）As to different character, introvertstudents are more prone to suffer from communication anxiety relative to extrovert students,which may be explained by the different features people show when they communicate witheach other.3) Students achievement and communicative anxiety are negatively related to eachother. The score of students with good performance was higher than those with poor or average achievement. When it comes to the test anxiety, things are much similar among thestudents.4) The students in Grade one are prone to foreign language classroom anxiety thanstudents in other grades. When we analyze the fear of negative evaluation, the students inGrade one suffer from it most, and the students in Grade three and the students in Grade twothe least. Besides, through the interview, we find we can help the students reduce their anxietyby developing students’ meta-cognitive strategies and learning in groups.