A Study On The Effect Of Situational Teaching Method On Primary School Students' Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety From The Perspective Of Situated Cognition Theory

Affective factors have an impact on students' language learning performance.Thus,anxiety,which is an essential component of affective emotions,has been emphasized.The English curriculum standards for compulsory school stipulate that students in primary school should develop positive emotions toward English.But in actual teaching practice,students are afraid of speaking English and making mistakes in English classes.They feel very anxious in English classes.As teachers,we should adopt teaching methods that would be useful for students to learn English and help them reduce their anxiety.The study is based on situated cognitive theory,constructivism and affective filter hypothesis.Through this study,the author intends to solve the following three questions:(1)What effects does situational teaching method have on students'English classroom anxiety level?(2)Does the situational teaching method have the same impact on male and female students in terms of the foreign language classroom anxiety?Why?(3)How do students evaluate situational teaching method?Class 3 and Class 4 from Grade Five in Xi'an Jichang Primary School are selected for this study.There are 80 students altogether.Class 3,with 20 boys and 20 girls,is the experiment class and Class 4,with 21 boys and 19 girls,is the control class.The author uses foreign language classroom anxiety scale(FLCAS),final exam tests and an interview to study the three questions.This experiment lasts for sixteen weeks and it is divided into three stages.The first stage is the pre-experiment stage.All the students are required to fill in the FLCAS.At the same time,the author collects these students' final exam grades last semester and the scores of FLCAS for the boys and girls in the experiment class,with the purpose to use them in the post-experiment.The second stage is the teaching stage.The experiment class is taught by situational teaching method and the control class is taught by grammar translation method.The last one is the post-experiment stage.After 16 weeks,the author checks out students'foreign language classroom anxiety scale scores and their final exam grades again.Meanwhile,the author collects male and female students',scores of FLCAS to make a comparison with that of the pre-experiment.All the data collected is analyzed by SPSS 17.0.The results are listed below.First,students' English grades in the experiment class are improved and the anxiety scale scores decrease,which proves that students' anxiety level is alleviated.But for the students in the control class,their anxiety level and English grades do not have significant difference,which indicates that these students' anxiety level does not change.Second,situational teaching method has the same impact on male and female students in terms of the foreign language classroom anxiety.Both boys' and girls' anxiety levels are lowered down after the experiment.Last,by interview,the author finds that the students like situational teaching method and they propose some advice.This study provides new thoughts on how to alleviate students' foreign language and puts forward some advice to English teaching in the primary school.The author hopes that these could be helpful to the English teaching.