A Study On Junior High School Students’ English Test Anxiety And The Intervention Of The Integrated Sandplay Therapy

At present,with the increasingly fierce social competition and uneven distribution of educational resources,the pressure of examination for middle school students in China is increasing.In the field of junior high school English learning,test anxiety has become a prominent problem that affects the acquisition and development of learners’ English competence.Many research results have confirmed that test anxiety may distract attention,affect the processing of language stimuli,cause learners’ fear of foreign language learning,and thus negatively affect their foreign language learning achievement(Horwitz et al.,1986;Mac Intyre,1995;Dewaele,Petrides & Furnham,2008;Cheng,2017;Teimouri et al.,2019).In this context,how to effectively alleviate the test anxiety of junior high school students and improve their English learning level has always been the focus of academic attention and research.However,there are few scholars who have studied the test anxiety of junior high school students from the perspective of sandbox game intervention.Therefore,this study took junior high school students’ English test anxiety and its intervention mechanism as the research object.Questionnaire survey and quantitative analysis methods were used to explore the current level and basic characteristics of test anxiety of junior high school English learners.Through combing and analyzing the existing theories and research results,the concept and connotation of English test anxiety were deeply explained.This study measured the degree of junior high school students’ English test anxiety through questionnaire survey,and then used descriptive statistical analysis and comparative analysis methods to investigate the actual situation and individual differences of junior high school students’ English test anxiety.On this basis,this paper tried to apply the integrated sand game therapy to the intervention practice of improving the test anxiety of junior high school students,so as to explore the effect of the integrated sandplay therapy on alleviating the English test anxiety of junior high school students.According to the results of English test anxiety level measurement,we used extreme grouping method to screen out the top 27% of high-level test anxiety participants as candidates,and further conducted an open interview for them.Based on the interview results,30 junior high school students were finally selected as the experimental participants,among which 15 participants were selected as the intervention subjects and received the integrated sand game intervention therapy for two months,while the remaining 15 participants were selected as the control group and did not receive any experimental intervention.All participants clearly understood the purpose of the study and volunteered to participate in the experiment.The results showed that:1.Junior high school students generally have English test anxiety,which is generally at a medium level.According to the questionnaire measurement and statistical analysis,junior high school students have a high score in English test anxiety measurement,with an average of 16.49 points,indicating that junior high school students generally have certain anxiety in the process of English test,and most junior high school students’ anxiety in English test is at a medium level.2.There are significant differences in the level of English test anxiety of junior high school students of different genders and grades.Among them,the test anxiety level of male students is significantly higher than that of female students,and the test anxiety level of ninth-grade students is the highest.3.Integrated sandplay therapy has a significant intervention effect on junior high school students’ English test anxiety.After the integrated sandplay therapy,the scores of English test anxiety in the intervention group were significantly reduced,while the English test anxiety level in the control group did not change significantly before and after the experiment.In conclusion,the integrated sandplay therapy is an effective intervention to relieve the anxiety of junior middle school students in English test.The results of this study have important implications for junior high school English teaching practice.First of all,English teachers should pay more attention to the mental health of junior high school students,combine diversified teaching resources and methods,enhance teacher-student interaction and emotional communication,and create a positive classroom atmosphere.Secondly,educational administrators should develop and improve mental health education programs,train professional psychological tutoring teachers,and actively introduce integrated sandplay therapy into the field of psychological counseling in order to timely tutoring and intervention treatment of junior high school students’ anxiety.Furthermore,we should strengthen the effective cooperation among school,family and society,pay attention to the psychological health of junior high school students and promote their all-round development.