A Study On The Anxiety Of Pre-service English Teachers

In recent years,more and more scholars begin to focus on the research on teacher anxiety.After conducting a literature review of teacher anxiety,the research finds out that recent studies concerning teacher anxiety mainly focus on middle school teacher group and college teacher group.Studies on pre-service teacher anxiety are rarely to be seen.Based on the literature review of language teacher anxiety,it can be seen that studies on language teacher anxiety centralize in the language factor of teacher anxiety.Therefore,the thesis intends to conduct research on the level of pre-service English teacher anxiety.Based on the State-Trait Theory and the Multidimensional Facets of Trait Anxiety and the results of data analysis,the research proposes a pre-service teacher anxiety model.The research adapts and revises the Student Teacher Anxiety Scale of Ngidi &Sibaya(2003).Subjects are chosen from third-year and senior undergraduate students from Guangxi Normal University,Qufu Normal University,Shanghai Normal University,Jiangsu Normal University,and first-year and first year and second-year postgraduate students from Central China Normal University.238 effective copies are returned in total to discuss the present level of pre-service teacher anxiety.Interviews are conducted based on the quantitative data and 8 interviewees are randomly chosen from the subjects of the questionnaire to get the influencing factors of pre-service teacher anxiety and their response towards anxiety.The research questions of the thesis are: 1)What is the present anxiety level of pre-service English teacher anxiety? 2)What are the influencing factors of pre-service English teacher anxiety? 3)How do pre-service English teachers respond to different kinds of anxiety?The findings are: 1)Pre-service English teachers have a medium anxiety level in general.The anxiety level between undergraduates and postgraduates shows little difference.Among the five anxiety factors,evaluation anxiety has the highest level,and interpersonal relationship anxiety is the lowest.Class control anxiety,professional preparation anxiety,second language anxiety are medium level;there's a significant difference of the three factors(evaluation anxiety,class control anxiety,professional preparation anxiety)in terms of gender.2)Influencing factors of the anxiety of preservice English teacher are: teaching experience,mastering of classroom English,personal characteristics,school level of practice schools,attention received from practice schools,and student performance;3)In order to reduce the anxiety,pre-service English teachers tend to communicate with peers,make full preparations and learn from seniors.The research discusses the present level,influencing factors and the responses of pre-service English teacher anxiety,which can,to some extent,broaden the scope of the research field of teacher anxiety.In addition,the research offers some suggestions to society,schools and pre-service English teachers themselves,which may have reference value for reducing the anxiety level of pre-service English teachers.