A Study Of FLA In Secondary Vocational School Students’ Oral English Learning

As is described in the English syllabus of Secondary Vocational School, the majorgoal of the English course is to cultivate the students’ English practical ability in dailylife and different situations at work, so it is important to develop students’ oral ability inEnglish teaching. However, owing to various reasons the status quo of secondaryvocational school students’ oral English teaching and learning is not optimistic. Foreignlanguage anxiety (FLA) is regarded as one of the main factors affecting oral Englishlearning. Till now, lots of researches have been done on FLA, the relationship betweenFLA and oral English ability as well as measures to cope with FLA in oral Englishlearning. Some consensuses have also been reached, such as FLA and speaking abilityare negatively correlated. Besides, in some researches, some effective countermeasureshave been put forward to deal with FLA in oral English learning, such as innovatingteaching mode, adopting co-operative learning, etc. However, there is a limitation in theexisting researches. The subjects are mostly university students or high school students,and little is done on the secondary vocational school students. The possiblecountermeasures are general, and do not aim at this special group of students, not tospeak of being combined with industry practice. Therefore, the relevant research is ofsome value. In view of this, the author takes92Hotel Management majors of Sichuan TourismSchool as subjects, investigates their FLA level in oral English learning, and explorespossible main causes of their FLA in oral English learning through questionnaires,interviews and classroom observations, etc. The investigation reveals that77.5%students are suffering from FLA, and there are mainly four factors which contribute tostudents’ high FLA level. Firstly, secondary school students’ traits lead to anxiety,namely lacking courage, self-confidence and the spirit of adventure, inborn nature tocompete and excel others, as well as low English proficiency. Secondly, their incorrectbeliefs of English learning can cause anxiety. For example, they pay too much attentionto perfect pronunciation and intonation, great fluency and accurate grammatical forms,etc. Thirdly, their low tolerance of ambiguity is also a significant source of FLA.Fourthly, the influence of English class teaching may result in anxiety, which includesthe teacher’s roles, teaching styles, input, attitudes toward students’ errors and highexpectations for students. Based on the investigation results and Krashen’s Input andAffective Filter Hypothesis, as well as Long’s Interaction Hypothesis, the author alsoproposes some effective measures to reduce secondary vocational school students’ FLAin oral English learning. The teacher should help students develop positive andsupportive beliefs about English learning in a relaxing, low-anxiety classroomenvironment. To improve the oral classroom teaching, the teacher is supposed to changeroles, offer comprehensible input, choose appropriate error correction strategies, andarouse students’ interest and motivation, etc. In addition, it is strongly suggested that theteacher should apply the task-based teaching and combine teaching with industrypractice. Also, an experiment on the reduction of students’ FLA in oral English learningis carried out, in which the countermeasures are applied to teaching practice. Theparticipants are limited to the students of Sichuan Tourism School who major in HotelManagement. The one-term teaching practice in the experimental class proves theauthor’s hypotheses, that is to say, the proposed countermeasures can help alleviateHotel Management majors’ FLA in oral English learning, and with the reduction of FLA, their oral English proficiency can also be improved.