Review of Studies of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety

Anxiety is considered to be one of the key psychological variables as well as one of the important emotional factors that affect language learning. Taken into account that classroom is the main place in which Chinese college students learn English,it is of great significance to study students' language anxiety in the classroom environment. Based on the previous researches, this paper reviews the relevant studies in this area conducted at home and abroad.

A Brief Look at Classroom Activities of Foreign Language Teaching

分别对热身、采访、猜疑、拼板、协同、讨论、模拟与角色扮演等七类外语教学课堂活 动进行论述,分析了它们在外语教学中的作用,并针对活动的操作提出了一些建议。

Foreign Language Classroom Discourse Analysis

This paper reviews some works done to classroom discourse analysis and summaries some peculiarities of foreign language classroom discourse.Some strategies are proposed for the teachers to activate students into communicative teaching activities in classroom for the purpose of improving college English teaching and learning.

A Brief Analysis About the Function of the Communicative Approach -- It Can Lighten Classroom Anxiety in Foreign Language Teaching

Classroom Anxiety is very common and to some extent it influences students＇ achievements in foreign language learning. So, how to solve this problem in order to help students have a good performance in foreign language learning is a very urgent issue. According to the writer＇s study, communicative approach is an effective method to deal with it.

Language Learning Strategies and Strategic Teaching in the Foreign Language Classroom

The results of a great deal of research have suggested that language learning strategies can be taught and that instructing learning strategies and integrating them into regular instruction can greatly facilitate the learning of a second/foreign language.The aim of this article is to draw the readers' attention to strategic teaching that should be introduced in the foreign language classroom in order to meet the demands of contemporary language education. In particular, it points to the necessity that teachers should change their attitudes towards the roles they play in the classroom to become truly responsible for their learning.

An Empirical Study on Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety of College Students

Classroom anxiety could exert a tremendous influence on foreign language learners during their process of studying.Within this study,353 college students of China Youth University of Political Studies(CYUPS)are selected as participants;the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale(FLCAS)is applied as a tool and Statistic Package for Social Science(SPSS)software is used to analyze all the data to figure out whether there is difference on genders,grades,and majors among college students on their levels of foreign language classroom anxiety.The results show that considering all three anxiety perspectives:communication apprehension,test anxiety,and fear of negative evaluation,anxiety level between males and females are similar;there is also no significant difference among grades;however,English majors are significantly less anxious than non-English majors on test anxiety.

Speaking Anxiety in a Kazakhstani Foreign Language Classroom

The present study aimed to contribute to our understanding of foreign language anxiety, in general, and in particular speaking anxiety in Kazakhstani environment. It was the first attempt to fill this gap and reveal more about the speaking anxiety in the Elementary level of Kazakh students group, having considered how anxiety might have affected speaking and overall classroom performance. This study addressed the issue of identifying foreign language speaking anxiety and the major consequences of language speaking anxiety reported by students learning English in the evaluation of the foreign language classroom. Anxiety levels in Kazakh students of English were studied through self-evaluation using a scale adapted from the FLCAS （Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale） developed by E. K. Horwitz, M. B. Horwitz, and Cope （1986）. As revealed by the results of this study, English language speaking anxiety does exist among the Kazakh second-year university students who participated in this study. And too, the study revealed that these students have had a number of negative experiences with speaking activities in a foreign language class.

A Case Study on the Pattern of Classroom Discourse in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language

Based on the IRF(initiation,response,and feedback)classroom discourse structure model proposed by Sinclair and Coulthard,this research analyzes and studies the actual corpus of Chinese classroom teaching in Thailand,focusing on the structural model of teacher-student communication discourse,mainly from two aspects of teachers'feedback.On the one hand,it investigates whether IRF is fully applicable to Chinese classroom teaching and whether there are special situations to it.On the other hand,it attempts to summarize the discourse structure model of Chinese classroom teaching and explores the application of the research results in helping Chinese teachers improve their teaching quality in hope that constructive suggestions can be proposed for teaching Chinese as a foreign language.

A Study on Left-behind Junior Students'Foreign Language Learning Anxiety

Since the 1960s, foreign language educators and researchers home and abroad have started to pay attention to the influence of the affective variables including language learning anxiety on foreign language learning. This thesis tried to find out the factors that may influence the foreign language learning anxiety level of left-behind students and put forward ways to help lower down the foreign language learning anxiety level of the left-behind junior middle school students.

Foreign Language Enjoyment and Anxiety:Associations With General and Domain-Specific English Achievement

Recent research has confirmed the predictive effect of general foreign language(FL) achievement on Foreign Language Enjoyment(FLE) and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety(FLCA).However,few studies have examined the effect of domain-specific language achievement in shaping FL learning emotions.The present study thus aims to examine how FLE and FLCA are linked to overall FL achievement and self-perceived achievement in six different domains across listening,speaking,reading,writing,vocabulary,and grammar.A total of 1,415 Chinese senior secondary students participated in the questionnaire survey.Regression analyses showed that 1) both FLE and FLCA were predicted more by self-perceived general English proficiency,while less by actual English achievement;2) perceptions of speaking and grammar competence were significant predictors of both emotions;3) perceived reading competence predicted FLE significantly but not FLCA;and that 4) perceptions of listening,writing,and vocabulary competence predicted neither FLE nor FLCA.The implication is that domain-specificity should be taken into consideration in future explorations of FL emotions.

Foreign Language Enjoyment and Anxiety: The effect of teacher and learner variables (Ⅰ)

Positive psychology has boosted interest in the positive as well as the negative emotions that Foreign Language learners experience. The present study examines whether -and to what extent -foreign language enjoyment (FLE) and FL classroom anxiety (FLCA) are linked to a range of learner-internal variables and teacher/classroom-specific variables within one specific educational context. Participants were 189 British high school students learning various FLs. Levels of FLE were linked to higher scores on attitudes towards the FL, the FL teacher, FL use in class, proportion of time spent on speaking, relative standing and stage of development. Lower levels FLCA were linked to higher scores on attitudes towards the FL, relative standing and stage of development. FLCA thus seems less related to teacher and teacher practices than FLE. The pedagogical implication is that teachers should strive to boost FLE rather than worry too much about students' FLCA.

A Path Analysis of the Interrelationship Among EFL Learners’ Humor Style, Anxiety, and Language Proficiency

Humor is a complicated part of the human experience and therefore an important dimension of humanity’s unique ability for language. The main purpose of this study is to find which dimension of humor styles can better predict anxiety and language achievement. The participants of the present study were 210 (103 female and 107 male) Iranian advanced EFL learners with different ages, both genders, and various educational backgrounds. Convenience sampling was employed to collect data. This study utilized one test and two questionnaires which are Preliminary English Test (PET), the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ), and The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS). Path Analysis and Pearson correlation were used to analyze data. Results showed that all four sub-constructs of humor styles, affiliative humor (β=-0.27, p < 0.05), self-enhancing humor (β=-0.31, p < 0.05), aggressive humor (β= 0.17, p < 0.05), and self-defeating humor (β= 0.20, p < 0.05) are significant predictors of learners’ anxiety. However, among four sub-constructs of humor styles, only affiliative humor (β=-0.32, p < 0.05), and self-enhancing humor (β=-0.25, p < 0.05) are positive significant predictors of learners’ Language Achievement. In addition, language achievement is predicted negatively by anxiety (β=-0.26, p < 0.05). Two paths from aggressive humor to language proficiency (β= 0.09, p > 0.05), and from self-defeating humor to language proficiency (β= 0.07, p > 0.05) were not significant and removed from the model. With regards to the field of foreign language, humor has been identified as a powerful means to decrease students’ anxiety in a foreign language learning situations and it helps language learners in performing in a foreign language.

OPTIONS IN COPING WITH FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM ANXIETY

This thesis is a project on foreign language classroom anxiety. Since Krashen put forward the affective filter hypothesis, more and more concern has been paid to the anxiety problem by foreign language educators and researchers at home and aboard. Among them, one qualitative research in Reticence and Anxiety in Second Language Learning by Amy B. M. Tusi stood out and received much attention. My project intends to justify the causes for foreign language classroom anxiety and corresponding strategies, based on the research of Amy B. M. Tusi (1985). The subjects in Tsui's project are English teachers in secondary school. Little research has been done on non-English-major students in the general university of technology in mainland of China. Therefore, this thesis will provide some practical data and suggestions for the research in this field. The whole thesis consists of five chapters. The first two chapters mainly discuss the definition, the causes of foreign language classroom anxiety and current research in this field. The third and the fourth parts focus on the research in this thesis: objects, subjects, instruments, methodology and data results and analysis. The study shows that because of the difference in English proficiency level, style of cognition, culture, and educational background among students, five factors and five strategies for foreign language classroom anxiety proposed by Amy B. M. Tusi only fit some students in college English class. Based on the data results, five personal proposals are put forward, and I hope these proposals will provide some options for practicing English teachers of non-English-major instruction in the general university technology to cope with foreign language anxiety.

Observation of UK schools and perspective of TEFL classroom in ChinaElia publis se nos fecris. Faucienatque

In this paper, 3 different foreign/second language-learning classrooms will be presented. There will be a comparison between those classes and TEFL classes in China, including background of different education systems and different teaching methodologies and approaches. In the end, some suggestions will be given to Chinese TEFL classes. The aim is mainly to show the differences between language teaching and learning in the UK and in China, and also to give people a chance to think deeply over the current TEFL teaching and learning in China.

CULTURE LEARNING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

Ⅰ. Introduction Foreign language teachers in China nowadays are well aware that language learning cannot be separated from cultural learning. They start to deal with intercultural communication in the classroom and have undergone significant progress in the past two decades. A lot of excellent work has been done (see Hu Wenzhong 1990, 1997) on raising cultural awareness and pragmatic insights.

USING AUTHENTIC LISTENING MATERIALS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOMS

This paper argues for the need for authentic listening materials in the ELT classroom in China,discussing the selection of those materials,and their adaptation for classroom use,whilst outlinig theirconstraints.

REPAIR MECHANISM IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM INTERACTION

This paper presents practical research on repair mechanismand its four repair trajectories in FL classroom interaction. Thisshows that it is effective and efficient in assisting FL learners todevelop their communicative competence and understand theprocess of language acquisition. Repair strategies that are ofgreat value to FL teachers in FL classroom teaching are also ex-pounded.

On Teacher Talk in ELT Classroom Teaching

Teacher talk (TT for short) in China's ELT (English as Foreign Language Teaching) classroom teaching refers to the speech that the teacher uses to speak to students when the teacher undertakes teaching tasks and spread knowledge. This article will firstly introduce teacher talk briefly and then analyze some strategies with regard to TT with the ultimate purposes of illustrating how effective teacher talk contributes to the good relationship between teacher and students in ELT classroom.

ANXIETY IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

Introduction With the rapid growth in international communication, English is becoming more and more important. The urgent task for English teachers, is to apply knowledge gained from educational psychology research to make teaching more efficient. For this purpose, anxiety, an important psychological phenomenon in foreign language learning, is discussed in this article. First anxiety will be defined to build up a clear concept of its origin and its nature. Then its effect on foreign language learning will be analysed. A few suggestions for teachers will be presented at the end.