Experimental Research On The Impact Of Task Repetition And Positive Reinforcement To English Study Anxiety And Performance Among The Fifth Grade Students From The Countryside

Foreign language learning anxiety is a kind of adverse emotional reaction produced by learners in a specific environment in the process of learning foreign language,such as mental tension,fear,excessive depression,etc.,which plays a very important role in the merits and demerits of learners’ language performance.In order to explore whether task repetition and positive reinforcement can reduce the level of foreign language learning anxiety of primary school students,and thus improve their foreign language learning performance,especially their oral performance,the researchers of this paper carried out two studies.In study 1,in order to examine the applicability of the revised foreign language learning anxiety scale in the sample of rural primary school students,170 fifth-grade students from a rural primary school were randomly selected to participate in the test of the English learning anxiety scale.Among them,91 were boys,accounting for 53.3%.There were 79 girls,accounting for 46.5percent.Using exploratory factor analysis method to the dimension of the scale and the crone Bach alpha coefficient of scale to test the homogeneity of reliability,the results showed that:(1)using the principal component method to extract the first factor of the characteristic value is11.784,the second factor characteristic value is 1.898,the ratio is 6.21,the value is greater than 5,meet the requirements of the quantity form d sex,show that the scale in this sample has good structure validity.(2)the calculated cronbach coefficient is 0.942,indicating that the scale has a high degree of homogeneity reliability.Therefore,it can be inferred that the revised scale is applicable to the measurement of foreign language learning anxiety of rural primary school students.In the second study,in order to explore whether task repetition and positive reinforcement can effectively reduce foreign language learning anxiety and improve foreign language speaking performance and overall foreign language learning performance,56 subjects were selected by using the foreign language learning anxiety scale and speaking test revised in the first study,and then divided into four groups of 14 people.There was no significant difference between the foreign language learning anxiety and speaking performance of the four groups.Using 2 x 2completely randomized design to carry out the experiment,the experiment of the independent variable has two: task duplication,consists of two levels(don’t repeat and repeat)and positive reinforcement,including two levels(not strengthen and positive reinforcement),the experiment of the dependent variable is English learning anxiety,English language achievement and English final exam.The results showed that :(1)task repetition and positive reinforcement significantly reduced the English learning anxiety of rural primary school students,and significantly improved their English final exam results,and the role of task repetition is greater than the role of positive reinforcement;(2)only positive reinforcement significantly improved oral English scores;(3)task repetition and positive reinforcement can significantly change students’ English learning attitude and behavior.Therefore,it can be concluded that task repetition and positive reinforcement have significant effects on improving English learning anxiety and improving English learning performance,which can be extended to English teaching in the future.