Effects Of Cooperative Learning Approachon Rural Junior Middle School Students’ English Classroom Anxiety And Achievement

The issue of how to improve EFL learners’ English achievement has drawn great attention of the society and has been a common concern of English teachers. As is known to all, the process of English learning is influenced by cognitive, cultural as well as affective factors.Some scholars have observed that when students perform tasks individually in the English class, they usually experience anxiety. Many scholars regard anxiety as one of the most critical affective variables which have great influence on students’ English learning achievement. Hence studies have been carried out to explore whether cooperative learning would reduce language learners’ classroom anxiety. Attempts have also been made to investigate the relationship between learners’ anxiety and their language achievement.However, the participants of the previous studies were mostly recruited from high schools and colleges. Little effort has been made to examine the rural junior middle school students’ English classroom anxiety. The present study attempts to shed light on the effects of CL on rural junior middle school students’ English classroom anxiety and achievement.The present study is based on the Cognitive Development Theory, the Constructivis Theory and the Affective Filter Hypothesis. The author carried out an instructional experiment in a rural school in Henan province for 10 weeks. The study addressed the following four research questions:(1) What is the general condition of the rural junior middle school students’ English classroom anxiety?(2) Does the students’ English classroom anxiety have correlation with their English achievement?(3) Can cooperative learning approach reduce the students’ English classroom anxiety?(4) Can cooperative learning approach improve the students’ English achievement?The participants of this study were Grade Nine students from Class 4 and Class 7 in Zhenhua Middle School. The two classes’ final English examination scores in the spring semester in 2014 served as the pre-test of their general English proficiency. The independent samples T-test was used to analyze the data and the results indicated that Class 4 and Class 7 were of the same English proficiency. So Class 7, which was composed of 42 students, was randomly assigned as the experimental class. Class 4 had 40 students and was treated as the control class.Before the experiment started, a questionnaire was conducted to investigate the students’ English classroom anxiety level. Then the cooperative learning approach and the traditional approach were used to teach the experimental class and the control class respectively. After ten weeks of teaching, all the subjects participated in the mid-term exam, which was used as the post-test of the students’ English achievement. The two classes were also required to do the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale again by the end of the experiment. All the data were collected, and analyzed by SPSS19.0.The study obtained the following findings:(1) English classroom anxiety was pervasive among the participants. The lowest value of the participants’ overall anxiety is 49, which is much higher than the theoretical maximum value 33. In addition, more than 50 percent of the subjects suffered from a high level of anxiety;(2) there was a negative correlation between the students’ English classroom anxiety and their English achievement. That means the higher the students’ anxiety scores were, the lower their achievements would be;(3) the experimental class’ anxiety means in the pre-test and post-test were 106.86 and 99.67 respectively, while the control class’ anxiety means were 107.98 and 107.15. There was no significant difference between the two classes’ anxiety mean scores in the pre-test, in contrast, the anxiety mean difference between the two classes reached the significant level in the post-test. This proved that cooperative learning alleviated the students’ English classroom anxiety;(4) the experimental class’ English proficiency means in the pre-test and post-test were 57.05 and 60.90 respectively, while the control class’ English means were 56.45 and 58.00. The two classes’ English mean scores before and after the experiment did not differ significantly. This means that cooperative learning did not promote the students’ English achievement more effectively than the traditional teaching method.Based on the major findings of the experiment, the author called on the English teachers to pay more attention to the influence of anxiety on English learning and provided some pedagogical suggestions for alleviating students’ English classroom anxiety, hoping to provide valuable implications for rural middle school English teaching.