An Empirical Study On Listening Anxiety Of English Under-Achievers In Senior High School

Since the 1960 s, foreign language educators and scholars have started to become increasingly interested in the affective factors. Anxiety, as an important psychological variable, influences the effect of language learning.Studies on English listening anxiety began in the 1980’s. The researchers believe that listening plays an important part in the process of learning English. The main researchers home and abroad are Vogely, Elkhafaifi, YangJin,YuXinle and so on, all of them make some researches about the course of listening anxiety, the effect of listening anxiety on English achievements and the overcoming the listening anxiety.However, when we look back to the researches, it’s easier to find that the subjects of the research are mainly college students, adults, while the middle school students are in small number. However, the under-achievers in senior high school may go through the different anxieties compared with other excellent students. In my paper, the under-achievers are the students that with normal intelligence level and psychological level, but they can not attain to the requirements of English teaching objects. This paper studies the listening anxiety of them, analyzes the reason of producing listening anxiety and gives them some scientific guidance and psychological guidance by taking some listening strategies trainings. At the same time, I pay more attention to the cooperative learning among them to help them overcome anxiety, improve confidence and motivate their English learning interest. This paper analyzes the topic combined the Krashen’s "Affective Filter Hypothesis" and Rodgers’ s "Humanism" theory.The subjects participated in this research are 83 senior high school students of grade one in Oil Field Middle School in LiaoNing Province. The research instruments include questionnaire, English listening test, and interview. The following research questions are proposed based on the previous work and study:(1) What are the listening anxieties experienced by the English under-achievers?(2) What are the reasons of the listening anxieties?(3) How to overcome the English under-achievers’ listening anxieties by adopting effective measures? The research findings:(1) The listening anxieties are experienced by the English under-achievers are test anxiety, negative evaluation anxiety and perception anxiety.(2) The reasons of the listening anxiety are the high examination pressure, lack of confidence, the sense of listening nervous, lack of listening strategy and listening skills(3) Listening strategy training has a positive effect on reducing listening anxieties.