An Investigation Into English Classroom Anxiety Of Shaxi Junior Middle School

Since the 1970 s numerous researchers have found that affective factors exert great influence on students' learning process and outcomes.As one of the major affective factors,foreign language anxiety has attracted countless researchers' attention,they attach great importance to the effect of foreign language anxiety on language learning.In China,English is regarded as foreign language,thus foreign language anxiety in English classroom can be called as English classroom anxiety.So far,a great deal of domestic studies have researched on English classroom anxiety,but most of them take college students and graduate students as objects,only little research focuses on rural junior middle school students.Recently,Ministry of Education vigorously promotes education balance and resource leveling,thus education research also need to be balanced.Therefore,this thesis investigates 131 rural middle school students from Shaxi Junior Middle School(rural town middle school)to probe into the current situation of these participants' English classroom anxiety and the strategies they already have adopted to reduce their anxiety in English class.To achieve these goals,the author raises three research questions:(1)What's the current situation of these participants' English classroom anxiety in Shaxi Junior Middle School?(2)What are the possible factors contributing to these participants' English classroom anxiety?(3)What strategies have these participants already adopted to reduce their English classroom anxiety?To answer these questions,the author adopts English classroom Anxiety Scale(ECAS)to investigate the current situation of these participants' English classroom anxiety and to analyze the key factors contributing to their anxiety.Based on the qualitative research,the author interviews 25 volunteers to probe into what strategies students use to ease their anxiety.The research finds that(1)most students experience moderate English classroom anxiety and students' responses to certain items with high anxiety level are related to speech anxiety and confidence.Besides,significant anxiety differences exist among grade nine and other grades while no significant anxiety difference lies between grade eight and grade seven;(2)negative attitudes,speech anxiety,lack of confidence and communication apprehension contribute to English classroom anxiety,which are positively correlated with each other.From lacking of confidence and communicative apprehension perspectives,anxiety increases with grade growth,while speech anxiety decreases with grade increase;(3)students have employed some strategies to reduce their anxiety,such as studying and practicing hard,asking help from others,keeping dairy and positive auto-suggestion.However,students' efforts are not sufficient enough to help themselves to remove their high English classroom anxiety.Therefore,teachers also need to guide students to reduce high English classroom anxiety effectively and help them learn English happily and efficiently.Based on this study and combined humanistic psychology,the author proposes three pedagogical suggestions for rural English teaching,namely,teachers not only should create a harmonious classroom environment and employ formative evaluation mechanism,but also need to go deep into students' inner world and have insight into their emotional change.