A Study of Interrelationship Between Language Anxiety and English Proficiency for the Students in Different Grades in Junior High School

• Main Authors: Po-shen Pan, 潘柏升
• Other Authors: Ye-ling Chang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2002
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/74862428761697032827

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 英語學系 === 90 === The purpose of the study is to find out the interrelationship between language anxiety and English proficiency for students in the 7th- and 8th-grades in junior high school. According to the study findings, the researcher made some comparison of the two graders. Then, she investigated the problems and solutions to reducing the language anxiety of the students. To achieve the study purpose, the researcher distributed questionnaires FLCAS to 240 students in the 7th- and 8th-grades in Tungkung Junior High School, and then she retrieved 231 questionnaires. The retrieval percentage is 96.2%. After discounting ineffective questionnaires, 113 7th-grade students’ and 112 8th-grade students’ questionnaires were valuable for data analysis. Then the 225 data was quantitatively analyzed by chi-square, correlation, and one-way ANOVA in the SPSS program. Besides, 90 of the students were randomly chosen for interviewing about the problems and solutions to reducing the language anxiety. Then the relevant data were analyzed qualitatively. According to the statistical results, five important study findings were conducted as follows: 1. The 7th- and 8th-grade students had extremely different responses to five items of the questionnaire FLCAS, in terms of speaking anxiety and fear of negative evaluation, feeling uncomfortable around English native speakers, dislike going English classes, concentration in English classes and reading test anxiety. 2. Language anxiety negatively affects English proficiency of the students. It shows the modest negative relationship between the language learning anxiety level and the language proficiency of the two grades of students. 3. For the 7th- and 8th-graders, most students with high language anxiety levels tend to have low English proficiency. 4. For the 7th- and 8th-graders, most of the high-achievers tend to be at the low language anxiety levels. For the 8th-grade students, there is a significant difference in English learning experience. 5. The most crucial causes of language anxiety of the students are listening to English texts and being called up to answer questions in English classes. It is worth noting that the implications from the study of the interrelationship between language anxiety and English proficiency aim to deal with language anxiety. For students, they have to develop a low affective filter to enjoy learning English. They also need to frequently practice four English skills, including listening, speaking, reading and writing, to reduce the language anxiety and to enjoy learning achievement. For teachers, they should care about the feelings of the students in English classes, and try to avoid most anxiety-provoking instructions, such as calling the students randomly to answer the questions. Besides, teachers should pay attention to the teacher-and-student interaction and keep away from strict and uncomfortable error correction in class. In other words, teachers should create relaxing environments for students. As well, teachers should know what the students need and help them learn English efficiently.