A Study Of English Teachers' Teaching Anxiety In Primary School

In the 1950 s,researchers began to pay attention to researching on teacher anxiety,and found that teaching anxiety is a common emotional state of teachers,which not only affects the teaching quality of teachers,but also does harm to their physical and psychological health.However it is found that researchers' previous studies on anxiety mainly focused on students' learning anxiety and paid less attention to teachers' teaching anxiety,especially to the teaching anxiety of primary school English teachers.Based on Spielberger's state-trait anxiety theory,Bandura's efficacy expectation theory and the uncertainty theory,and with appraisal tools of questionnaire and semi-structural interview,this study probes into the English teachers' teaching anxiety in primary schools with the subjects of 55 primary school English teachers from Xiufeng District in Guilin,in order to answer the questions as follows: 1)How is the general picture of teaching anxiety of primary school English teachers? 2)What is the relationship between teachers' teaching anxiety and their gender,teaching length and professional title? 3)What are the causes of teaching anxiety? The software of SPSS 19 was used to analyze the data of questionnaires while the method of content analysis was also used to analyze the content of interviews.Results indicate that the teaching anxiety of primary English teachers is comparatively low,and the teaching anxiety level of primary school English teachers in different dimensions is very similar,but most teachers have a higher level of teaching anxiety before teaching.Moreover,the teaching anxiety level of male teachers is higher than that of female teachers in general.Finally,English teachers with different teaching length and professional titles also have different degrees of teaching anxiety in different dimensions.This research has provided practical suggestions for primary school English teachers to help them cope with and reduce their teaching anxiety.At the same time,this study has offered insights for school administrators and researchers.But because the scope of research is not wide enough,there still exist limitations in it,and hopefully it can be optimized in future study.