A Study Of Vocational Students' Foreign Language Anxiety Under The Flipped Classroom Mode

The development of economy and science have promoted the innovation of education and brought a higher requirement for well-educated persons on both specialized knowledge and intercultural communicative competence in English.Foreign language anxiety,the critical emotional factor affecting college English teaching,has long influenced the efficiency of English classes.In vocational colleges,English class atmosphere are generally not active,teaching mode are old,teaching material are boring and teaching effect are not good,which are the current educational status.The old teaching model,inactive atmosphere and boring books in class as well as poor teaching outcomes call for an immediate reform in teaching.In the process of pedagogical reform and innovation,teaching modes and approaches supported by the latest technologies,especially information technology,have improved.Flipped Classroom Mode,a surging trend in the current college English teaching,subverts the traditional "in-class" knowledge imparting and "after-class" knowledge internalization mode by adopting the "after-class" knowledge imparting and "in-class" knowledge internalization.It will hand more initiatives to students,boost students' motivation in class,make them understand knowledge and improve the learning efficiency as well as fully embody the idea of "student-centered".This paper took the students of vocational colleges as the experimental object and studied them through questionnaires,oral English test and test papers under the flipped classroom mode in English class.The data of changes in interest,English proficiency and foreign language anxiety will be analyzed and the conclusions of the study can be drawn as follows:Firstly,flipped classroom mode was more effective compared with the traditional mode and did help to enhance students' linguistic competence in English learning.Students' English proficiencies of the EG were improved significantly after they received flipped classroom mode's teaching.Despite the fact that both groups have made some improvements in their English proficiencies to some degree,only the EG group who received flipped classroom mode have progressed significantly both in overall performance and especially in oral English and listening comprehension.From having almost no idea about the flipped classroom model to enjoying it,the students' attitudes towards the flipped classroom mode have been through a dramatic change and become positive and affirmative.Secondly,in the end of the research there was a significant difference in learners' anxiety level between two groups.However,some specific items of foreign language anxiety between two groups were significantly different,especially in the items of CA and FNE.The anxiety level in TA was similar between EG and CG.All these indicates that flipped classroom mode can significantly lower students' overall foreign language anxiety levels,especially in specific aspects of Communication Apprehension and Fear of Negative Evaluation.Thirdly,the foreign language anxiety levels of students in EG increased significantly after a semester's teaching,i.e.,in the middle of the teaching experiment,nevertheless it dropped at the end of the teaching experiment compared with that in the mid-FLCAS.Namely,students' foreign language anxiety levels have experienced a fluctuation in the whole experiment,which indicates that the flipped classroom mode contributes to salient effects on students' levels of foreign language anxiety.Students in the EG feel more stressed and anxious in the middle of the teaching experiment,but their foreign language anxiety levels have significantly declined at the end of the experiment.Therefore,we can conclude that the flipped classroom mode can lightens learners' emotional stresses at the end of the two semesters' experimental teaching when they get used to the pace of teaching and learning.Fourthly,there are negative correlations between learners' anxiety level and their learning outcomes in the flipped classroom model.In other words,there exists a negative and strong relationship between student's foreign language anxiety and English learning achievement.The higher the student's anxiety is the lower score he will get in the PRETCO-B test.Furthermore,students in low-level foreign language anxiety demonstrate much more progress in English studies than high-degree ones and they feel more relaxed and motivated towards English studies both in and out of class.