A Survey Of English Learning Anxiety Of Underachieving Students In Senior High School

With the coming of information era and the increasing frequency of international contacts, English has become the important role of the international language. Meanwhile, many countries in the world have been strengthening English teaching, which makes English teaching have multiple social significances. It is especially true for English teaching in senior high school, because English teaching in senior high school not only bears the responsibility for cultivating qualified talents for colleges and universities, but also for sending high-quality personnel to the society.With the development of humanistic psychology since the50s of the last century, the scholars at home and abroad have been paying close attention to the role of affective factors in learning, and they have found that affective factors play a very important role in learning. Besides, the problem of underachieving students has been a prevailing problem in primary and secondary education. And one of its forming reasons is affective factors, since learning process is the process combining cognition and affection. In addition, compared with other subjects, foreign language learning is prone to cause anxiety, because the process of foreign language learning is in a specific situation filled with ego-threat and anxiety. Therefore, as an important affective factor, the anxiety of foreign language learning affects the efficiency of foreign language learning. This paper focuses on English underachieving students in senior high school, and mainly investigates the current situation of their English learning anxiety. The research questions are as follows:1) what is the current situation of English learning anxiety of underachieving students in senior high school?2) What are the possible factors triggering English learning anxiety of underachieving students in senior high school?3) What kind of class dynamic can help to reduce their English learning anxiety?The subjects of this study are63English underachieving students in Senior Two from Shaanchai Middle School. Questionnaire, interview, and tests are mainly used in this paper. The questionnaire is adapted from Horwitz’s the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), which is used to investigate the current situation of English learning anxiety of underachieving students in senior high school and its possible causes. Interview is a supportive method to the questionnaire, to further explore possible factors triggering their English learning anxiety, and ask for advice on relevant countermeasures. Based on the results of the questionnaire and interview, tests are aimed to verify the effectiveness of teaching experiment of reducing their English learning anxiety and improving their English scores by purposely implementing teaching reform in the experimental class. Through the analysis of the results of the research, the author comes to the following conclusions:1) It is a prevailing phenomenon that English underachieving students in senior high school suffer from English learning anxiety, and more than half of them suffer from high level of it. According to the results of the questionnaire and interview, among all the anxieties, test anxiety is in the highest level, and followed by fear of negative evaluation and communicative apprehension.2) Based on the results of the data analysis of the questionnaire and interview, six possible factors causing English learning anxiety of underachieving students in senior school are found. They are low self-evaluation, low English proficiency, improper classroom activities and teaching methods, incomprehensible input, unreasonable evaluation method, and excessive test anxiety and deficient English test skills.3) Based on the six possible factors, teaching reform are purposefully implemented in the experimental class to reduce their English learning anxiety and improve English scores from the following eight aspects:①Helping English underachieving students correctly recognize the anxiety;②Helping English underachieving students build up confidence;③Giving English underachieving students some learning strategy instruction;④Formulating feasible teaching goals and tasks according to the actual level of English underachieving students;⑤Building a democratic and harmonious class atmosphere, and giving positive feedback to English underachieving students;⑥Carrying out cooperative learning;⑦Improving the evaluation method of English underachieving students;⑧Helping English underachieving students have a right attitude towards exams and giving them some test strategy instruction. By using the software SPSS19.0, the comparison and analysis of the FLCAS scores and English scores before and after the teaching experiment in experimental class and the controlled class certifies that the teaching reform methods are very effective.