A Study On The Levels And Sources Of Teaching Anxiety Among Pre-service English Teachers

Teacher,as a special and noble profession,have been drawing a lot of attention of researchers in the past decades of years.Teaching anxiety as one of the important orientation has been widely conducted by scholars.However,most of the researches were carried out among experienced teachers and few focused on pre-service teachers at home.So this study aims to investigate the teaching anxiety of pre-service English teachers during their teaching practicum and mainly to resolve the three questions:(1)How are the general pictures of teaching anxiety among pre-service English teachers in senior and junior high schools respectively during the teaching practicum?(2)What's the difference of pre-service English teachers' teaching anxiety between the two types of schools?Is the difference significant?(3)What are the sources of pre-service English teachers' teaching anxiety?The participants of this study were fifty-one the second year postgraduates,majoring in English teaching at the school of foreign languages,Central China Normal University(CCNU).This study adopted both the quantitative and qualitative methods to collect required data,including a questionnaire(The Teaching Anxiety Scale),teaching journal,and semi-structured interview.After the data collection and analysis,this study achieved four findings:firstly,most of the pre-service teachers in junior high schools(66.67%)and in senior high schools(70%)experienced a moderate level of teaching anxiety.Besides,23.81%of junior high school pre-service teachers and 16.67%of senior high school pre-service teachers suffered a high degree of teaching anxiety.Secondly,in general the teaching anxiety of junior high school pre-service English teachers was slightly higher than that of senior high school pre-service teachers.To be specific,in terms of difficulty in answering students' questions,evaluation of experienced teachers,speaking in front of colleagues and students' parents,being observed while teaching and relationship with students,the levels of teaching anxiety of junior high school pre-service English teachers were a bit higher than those of pre-service teachers in senior high schools.And in the aspects of career uncertainty,lacking of teaching competence,and comparing with other pre-service teachers,senior high school pre-service teachers were more anxious than junior high school pre-service teachers.In addition,in terms of lacking of teaching competence,evaluation of experienced teachers,being observed while teaching and speaking in front of colleagues and students' parents,both senior and junior high school pre-service teachers got a high level of teaching anxiety.Thirdly,although the statistics demonstrated the differences of teaching anxiety between the two types of schools,based on the results of independent sample t-test,there was almost no significant difference of teaching anxiety between the two types of schools except for the item "I feel less well prepared for teaching than other pre-service teachers in my teacher preparation program.",whose p-values was.01 and lower than.05.Fourthly,internal factors and external factors constituted the sources of pre-service English teachers' teaching anxiety.Internal factors included ability,evaluation,instructor's observation and self-identity.Besides,ability consisted of teaching ability,English ability and interpersonal ability.External factors contained classroom atmosphere and students' level.This study is hoped to help pre-service teachers prepare well before teaching practicum in order to reduce teaching anxiety and help them choose a more suitable school types in the future.In addition,the sources of teaching anxiety will help pre-service teachers deal with teaching anxiety more effectively.