A Study Of English Classroom Anxiety Of Senior High School Students

According to Krashen' Affective Filter Hypothesis,learner's mood and attitude determine the quality of learning.Affective factors such as motivation,attitude,and anxiety have a direct impact on foreign language acquisition.According to the New Standard English Curriculum,English teaching should be geared to the development of all the students for quality education and affections of each student should be concerned in classroom language teaching.Anxiety as one of the most important affective factors has received many scholars' concerns.And humanism advocates the student-centered education to promote the all-around development of the students.Based on the Krashen' Affective Filter Hypothesis and Maslow and Rogers' Humanistic psychology theory,this study aims to answer the following four questions:(1)To what degree do senior high school students experience English classroom anxiety?(2)What is the correlation between high school students' English classroom anxiety and their English achievements?(3)What are the factors that cause high school students' English classroom anxiety?(4)What coping strategies should be adopted for teachers and students to deal with students' English classroom anxiety?The research instruments of this study include the questionnaire of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale which is developed by Horwitz et al.,students' English examination results,semi-structured interview,in-depth interview and classroom observation.Three hundred high school students from a senior high school in Nanning participated in the survey.The data collected from the questionnaire are conducted by SPSS17.0 with descriptive analysis,independent sample test,one way anova and pearson correlation analysis.The research results indicate that most high school students experience moderate level or a low level of anxiety,and male students are more anxious than femalestudents.There is a negative correlation between language anxiety and students' English achievements.And there are various factors that affect English classroom anxiety of high school students.Negative self-evaluation and test pressure are the most serious factors that make the students anxious in English learning.Several coping strategies for reducing students' English classroom anxiety are put forward based on the researches.The first strategy is teacher-initiated strategy,with which English teachers should be friendly,humorous,patient,and tolerant of errors.The second is error correction strategy,that is,language teachers should pay attention to the ways of correcting students' errors and mistakes.And the third is pedagogical strategy,that is,language teachers can adopt Suggestion Teaching Approach reasonably so as to create a harmonious and relaxing learning environment,improve students' confidence and adopt the formative assessment to evaluate students' learning.