An Empirical Research On Alleviating Students’ College-English Classroom Anxiety By Means Of Task-based Language Teaching

Many scholars have conducted a lot of researches on English classroom anxiety.However,there are few research on conducting task-based teaching methods to alleviate the anxiety of college students.By conducting empirical research,the author aims at finding out whether task-based teaching method can effectively alleviate college students’ English classroom anxiety,intending to help students turn their anxiety into motivation and improve the effectiveness of English classes.This research has the purpose of exploring the three questions below:(1)Is there any differences of college students’ English classroom anxiety before and after the experiment in general?(2)Through the group analysis of the gender difference and students’ with high English proficiency and low English proficiency before the experiment,is there any difference in students’ English classroom anxiety before and after the experiment?(3)Through the comprehensive analysis of the general situation and grouping situation,What is the problem of applying task-based teaching method to relieve students’ classroom anxiety?An teaching experiment was conducted in Bowen College of Management Guilin University of Technology by the author for 10 weeks.The participants of the teaching experiment were sophomores from two parallel classes majoring in Design.One class was randomly selected as the control class and the other was assigned as the experimental class.Task-based language teaching was adopted in the experimental class,while the traditional teaching method was implemented in the control class.This research is based on affective filter hypothesis and social constrativism theory.And mainly employing the principle and implementation mode of the task-based teaching proposed by Willis(1996:39),dividing the classroom teaching of task-based teaching into three steps in English teaching in China.there are pre-task,Task cycle,and language focus stage.The research instruments included the foreign language classroom anxiety survey scale(FLCAS)and statistical software SPSS 20.0.Through the statistical analysis of students’ FLCA,test scores and interview in the pre-experiment and post-experiment,the research results were listed as the followings.(1)There is a significant difference of college students’ English classroom anxiety in general.After adopting task-based teaching method,the level of students’ English classroom in the experimental class decreased significantly,while there is no significant difference of students’ English classroom anxiety in control class.Therefore,the English classroom anxiety level of students in the experimental class has been alleviated effectively.(2)There is a significant change of students’ English classroom anxiety and gender difference.There is a significant change of students’ English classroom anxiety and English proficiency difference.It is specified as: male students’ English classroom anxiety is generally higher than that of female students.The level of English classroom anxiety of students with high proficiency is higher than that of students with low proficiency.(3)There is a significant difference of students’ English classroom anxiety on genders.While the level of female students’ anxiety is relieved slightly than male students.Meanwhile,we get to know that there is a slight difference of students with high English proficiency than students with low proficiency.As for what cause the final experiment results,the reasons are as followings: tasks designed by teachers are not appropriate for some students.there is a few evaluations and feedback to students after completing the task in English class.Teacher provides students few opportunities to practice and make presentation of task,which may leads students lost interests in learning English;some of the students are not adapt to the task-based language teaching,and they have negative attitudes on it.Based on the above findings,the author proposes some suggestions to alleviate college students’ English classroom anxiety more effectively by means of TBLT: pay attention to individual difference and stratified teaching;improve the evaluation,give students comments and feedback as much as possible;change students’ own learning philosophy.In this study,the application of task-based teaching in college English teaching has effectively alleviated college students’ English classroom anxiety.And provides some pedagogical implications for college English teaching.In addition,due to some certain restrictions,there are also some inevitable limitations of the study,such as the limitation of participants and experimental time.In the end,the author offers some suggestions for further research.