A Study Of Teacher Questioning And Student Anxiety In Junior High School English Classes

Foreign language anxiety,as one of the important affective factors affecting foreign language learning,has been a widespread concern in foreign language teaching research.The concept of foreign language anxiety was first defined by American psychologist Horwitz in 1986 as “a distinct complex of self-perceptions,beliefs,feelings,and behaviors related to classroom language learning,arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process.”Previous studies mostly focused on the nature of foreign language anxiety and the impact of foreign language anxiety on language acquisition,rarely discussed the impact of teacher questioning on learner anxiety.In English classes,teacher questionings,as common interactions between teachers and students,will inevitably have effect on learner anxiety.The purposes of this paper are to explore the causes of learner anxiety from the point of teacher questioning and ultimately provide ideas to reduce the anxiety of junior high school students.Based on Krashen's affective filter hypothesis and humanism learning theory,this thesis research from four main aspects: the types of teacher questioning,waiting time,teachers' feedback and the degree of student classroom anxiety.The research questions of this thesis are “What kinds of questions are more likely to cause student anxiety?” and “What are the reasons of student anxiety caused by teacher questioning?” Through the way of questionnaire,classroom observation and interview to research.The main objects of research are 121 junior high school students and four English teachers in Jilin city.Teacher questioning anxiety scale is used to measure learner anxiety,which is modified on the basis of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale(FLCAS is designed by Horwitz).Through classroom observation,the types of teacher questioning,waiting time,feedback and learner anxiety behaviors are recorded.Interviewees are eight students who are randomly picked from 4 classes and four English teachers.Try to explore the impact of teacher questioning on learner anxiety from perspectives both of teaching and learning.All the data got from anxiety scale were processed by SPSS 17.0 for Windows.Through the analysis of data,the main results of thesis are as follows: The students participating in the research have different levels of anxiety about the teacher questioning.It is important to pay attention to the anxiety state of students.The types of questions that can cause anxiety of students are referential questions,high level questions and x-questions.The reasons of student anxiety caused by teacher questioning are the way that teachers randomly ask students to answer questions,insufficient waiting time,difficulty of questions and teacher's negative feedback.Suggestions of reducing the anxiety of students are:(1)In the questions' content and difficulty aspects,design questions according to the actual study level of students and teaching objectives.(2)In the way of asking student aspect,do not use only one form to ask in one class.(3)In the waiting time aspect,waiting time should be appropriate for students to think.(4)In the teachers' feedback aspect,mainly use positive feedback and try to develop students' self-confidence.Domestic studies about the influence of teacher questioning on student anxiety in junior high school is not much.It is hoped that the research results in this thesis can help teachers to raise awareness of foreign language anxiety and can provide ideas to reduce the degree of student anxiety.