Rural Middle School Students' English Listening Anxiety: Causes And Strategies

Among the four basic language skills(listening,speaking,reading,and writing),listening is a top priority,because it is not only the foundation of language learning,but also the bridge connecting different languages.However,there are no specially designed English listening classes in rural middle schools.Worse still,listening teaching is not paid enough attention to and students' listening proficiency is generally low.Ministry of Education of China has attached greater importance to English listening,which end up in the Senior High School Entrance Examination.On the other hand,although students' attitude towards listening has changed,their listening performance still can't be greatly improved for some reasons.The conflict causes common anxiety among students in rural middle schools during the process of listening comprehension.This study has developed the following research questions: 1)what causes English listening anxiety among students in rural middle schools? 2)what is the relationship between listening anxiety and listening proficiency? 3)how to reduce their listening anxiety? The participants selected for the study are from Class Two and Class Four of the ninth grade at Bashi Middle School in Wuxi.Class Two is the experimental class,and Class Four is the controlled class.Before the experiment,the pre-test is taken by the participants.With the help of questionnaires,interviews and observation,the study finds that rural middle school students do experience listening anxiety in English class,and analyzes the factors that cause listening anxiety.Then,the teacher adopts new teaching method in the experimental class according to class observation in order to reduce anxiety.The post-test is taken in ten weeks,and the results are compared.Through SPSS analysis,the study has verified that the performance of the experimental class is higher than that of the controlled class.The findings indicates that most rural middle school students do experience a certain level of English listening anxiety.The results of the questionnaire reveals three causes of listening anxiety among rural junior middle school students: First,poor English foundation.Second,students' psychological vulnerability.Students are afraid of difficulties and making mistakes.Third,deficiency in listening skills.According to the present research,the correlation between listening anxiety and listening comprehension is negative.As a result,this study draws up the following strategies: 1)The teacher should firstly pay much attention to basic knowledge and strengthen the guidance of listening skills;2)The teacher should keep an eye on students' psychology and make positive intervention if necessary.