2。4 Researches on causes of language anxiety

According to Young (1991), there are six potential sources of language anxiety。 The first is personal and interpersonal anxieties, which basically refer to learners’ low self-esteem and competitiveness with others or an idealized self-image。 Learners with low self-esteem are easier to be anxious and concern much more about people’s opinions on them。 Often, they are introverted。 The second is learner’s beliefs about language learning, some beliefs are realistic, and others are not。 Those unrealistic beliefs are considered as the cause of anxiety, because “when beliefs and reality clash, anxiety results。” (Young, 1991) The third is instructor beliefs about language teaching, which indicates that teachers who are conservative and holding the idea of teacher-centered mode are not welcomed by students。 In this case, relaxed classroom atmosphere established by teachers is helpful to facilitate students’ anxiety。 The fourth is instructor-learner interactions, including how teachers correct students’ error, how students answer questions from teachers, and negative evaluation from teachers and peers。 Young particularly points out that it is the very manner of error correction that affects students’ anxious feelings。 The fifth is classroom procedures, which refer to various classroom activities, among which “speaking in front of the class” can lead to the highest anxiety (Young, Koch and Terrell, Mejίas et al。 and Daly)。 The last source is language testing, especially tests that students are not prepared in advance or test tasks which differ from what students have learnt in class。 However, MacIntyre and Gardner (1989) argue that the forming of anxiety is after the language learning experience, such as attitudes, emotions and methodology。 That is, language anxiety will come up with the negative attitudes, unhealthy emotions and unnatural methodology。 Besides, anxiety seems to be associated with time and experiences as well, but the comparative results of Japanese and French come out differently in some researches。 According to Samimy and Tabuse (1992), the more time people spend on learning Japanese, the more anxiety they get from it, which is totally opposite from French learner experiences。 (Gardner, Smythe & Brunet, 1977; Gardner, Smythe & Clement, 1979) 。

3 Methods/Methodology

3。1 Research objects 

This research was conducted in a School, a famous junior middle school in Taizhou, Zhejiang。It, established in 1994, is the first foreign language school in Taizhou。 It was confirmed as one of the 31 national designated foreign language schools by the National Foreign Language School Research Institute。 It is considered the first middle school which has the qualification to employ foreign teachers in Zhejiang Province。 From some respects, this school is good at English teaching。 That is also the reason why I choose this junior school to conduct my research。

The participants in this study were 42 students, ages ranging from 13 to 14。 The number of female students was 20, while the number of male participants was 22。 All the participants were from Class 8, Grade 1。 There are 20 classes in this school, among which Class 8 ‘s English performance was at a moderate level, including their examination , their participation in the English activities and so on。 Another reason why I choose this class as my research participant , is that I am the student teacher of this class。 Therefore, there would be more opportunity for to grasp the information related with my study, by having communication with them or their teachers, which is very helpful to my study。

To be concrete, the participants in the class observation were the all students, interviewees 4 students (2 female, 2 male)。 For the questionnaire, 42 students all participant, but 30(15 female, 15 male)’s questionnaire were analyzed。