An Investigation On The English Classroom Oral Presentation Anxiety Of Senior Students In Bao Gang NO.1 Middle School

In FL learning,speaking is a challenging skill,so teachers nowadays adopt oral presentations as a kind of teaching method to help students develop their public speaking skills in the target language.Not only can oral presentations activate learners but also can force them to develop the ability to organize and express their thoughts clearly in public.In order to help students do well in their oral presentations in college,many high schools also start to encourage students to do oral presentations in English classes.However,English learners’ oral presentations are not always successful in practical operations.It is common to see presenters make some mistakes or errors because of their anxiety.Regarded as an affective factor that pervasively obstructs the foreign language(FL)learning,anxiety has been attracting more and more academic concerns among foreign or second language teaching professionals.This thesis reports an investigation on the English Classroom oral presentation anxiety of 200 senior students from Bao Gang NO.1 Middle School,Inner Mongolia.The participants completed a questionnaire which consisted of 20 items concerning different reasons that caused their anxiety.The participants’ performance was also observed and recorded.Necessary interviews were also done for detailed information.The findings of the study reveal that the students of Bao Gang NO.1 Middle school experience moderate degree of oral presentation anxiety.The results also indicate that there exists no significant gender difference.The reasons behind their anxiety are associated with various factors such as the topic,the teacher’s mood and the presenter’s expectancy.Possible solutions are provided for students,as well as for English teachers,to improve their performance respectively so as to help learners’ oral presentations more successful.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter one is a general introduction,including research background,objectives,significance and organization of the paper.Chapter two introduces literature review which presents definitions of some basic items and an overview of existing studies.Chapter three expounds detailed information about the research design of this paper.In this part,participants,research methods and procedure of the study are introduced.Chapter four presents the research results,followed by some discussions on possible solutions to reduce learners’ anxiety in oral presentations.The last Chapter is a conclusion of this thesis paper declaring implications and limitations of the study.