A Study On English Learning Anxiety Of Senior High School Students In The Background Of College Entrance Examination Reform

As English teaching shifts its main focus from teaching to learning,which pays more attention to learners' learning ability,the studies on learning anxiety have been gradually developed and deepened.Therefore,great achievements have been made in this domain.Whereas the previous researches mainly focus on a certain type of anxiety such as listening or writing anxiety of college students,the studies on learning anxiety of senior high school students are relatively rare.However,as we all known,senior high school students in China where English plays a crucial role in college entrance examination suffer a lot from varied anxieties during the three years'schooling.In addition,with reforms of college entrance examination,students will have more than one chance to attend the English test and the ideal one will be chosen to be counted in the final result,which will absolutely affect their English learning anxiety.Therefore,to understand senior high school students' English learning anxiety in the background of English test reform;to know the main causes of their English learning anxiety,to comprehend the influence brought about by English test reform and to grasp the corresponding strategies that we can take to handle it have both crucial practical and theoretical significance.This study aims at knowing the current English learning anxiety situation of senior high school students in the new English test policy and its relationships with factors like gender,grade,English level and so on.What is more,it briefly discusses the influence of English test reform on English learning and teaching in senior high schools.The author chooses 245 students from a high school in Shaoxing county as the subjects and adopts "the Foreign Language Classroom Learning Anxiety Scale"provided by Horwitz(FLCAS)and interview as the methodology.The results show that many students are in trouble of getting acclimatized to the new test policy.They have anxieties in dealing with communications with others,negative evaluations from others,test failures and lack of confidence.The factors influencing learners' English learning anxiety are diverse,such as gender,grade,personality and so on.As for gender,females,relative to males,are more sensitive to negative evaluations,while they usually do better than males in English;introvert students are easier to suffer from communication anxiety than extrovert ones;while their test anxiety level is almost the same;students' main anxiety is different according to their grades.Grade one students are mainly in struggle of adapting to the new learning challenges;grade two students are busy with new lessons on the one hand,and start preparing for the first chance of English test on the other hand;grade three students are busy with the last English test,hoping to get a better result.Besides,subjects' English level in a degree is negatively correlated with their English leaning anxiety level.The causes of English learning anxiety are illustrated from the perspectives of internal and external factors.Finally,some pedagogical implications are discussed from the perspective of learners,teachers,parents as well as the whole society.All in all,the data and analyses present senior high students' current English learning anxiety in the background of college entrance examination reform,and to some extent,provide feasible reference to English learning,teaching and test policy reform.