An Investigation Of English Classroom Anxiety Of Senior High School Students

Anxiety is one of the most important emotional factors of students' foreign language learning.And it is a major affective disorder that affects the effect of students' foreign language learning.The anxiety caused in the process of learning and using a foreign language has a great negative impact on foreign language learners.A large number of studies have shown that nearly half of the foreign language learners produce anxiety.In 1973,Brown H.D.firstly predicted the affective variables had some relationship with the success of students' language learning,which included anxiety,attitude and motivation.Among these affective variables,anxiety was the most harmful factor that affects the students learning outcome.The study aims to investigate the students' English classroom anxiety in senior high school.The author uses two instruments in this study,the questionnaire and interview.The subjects participated in this study are 480 students from Wu'an No.3 High school in Handan city of Hebei province.To make the data more accurate,the author chooses 238 male students and 242 female students.Among the 480 subjects,160 learners are from Grade 1.The number of Grade 2 is also 160.And the rest of students are chosen from Grade 3.The data is used to analyze in SPSS13.0.Most of the students in high school experience English classroom anxiety.The highest score of English classroom anxiety in the students is 144,while the lowest level in the anxiety is 35.The gap between them can be seen obviously.The author uses factor analysis to explore the factors causing students' English classroom anxiety.Six factors causing students' English anxiety are Classroom Teaching,Communication Comprehension,Lack of Confidence,Fear of negative evaluation,Test anxiety and Attitude toward English.The research also looks for whether there is any significant correlation between the students' English classroom anxiety and their English test scores.The six factors all have some negative correlation with the students' test scores and the difference is significant(sig<.05).Among the means of different factors,lack of confidence is a little higher than the others.In addition,the relationship between students' classroom anxiety and other variables is analyzed in the study.The result is that there is a significant difference between gender and the foreign language classroom anxiety(sig=.0324,<.05).And the mainsignificant differences exist in the four aspects,lack of confidence,fear of negative evaluation,test anxiety and attitude toward English.There is also a significant difference between students' English anxiety and their English teachers' gender.The significant difference between students' English anxiety and their English teachers' gender is located in the aspect of classroom teaching(sig.=.042<.05).Through the above series of investigations and analyses in the study,the author thought the students' English classroom anxiety is extremely urgent for learning English.The writer gets some implications of the study for English teachers: 1)improve teaching methods to stimulate students' interest;2)create a releasable classroom environment;3)optimize the evaluation methods of teaching;4)help students build their self-confidence;5)carry out the cooperative teaching.The author also talks about some implications of the study for English learners: 1)set up practical goals for English learning 2)make good preparations for the class and review after class 3)adopt suitable learning strategies.