Since 1970s, many psychologists and linguists abroad have done researches about the influence of anxiety on foreign language study. Although few of these linguists consider that some kinds of anxiety can facilitate foreign language study, most of studies indicate that anxiety have negative influence on foreign language learning 215. At home, since 1980s, some foreign language learners have started to do experiments and studies continually, the results also confirmed that anxiety would hinder the achievement of language learners. What’s more, the investigations on the anxiety happened during oral learning and communication further proved that anxiety greatly hindered oral study.
The research this thesis mainly focuses on the affective anxiety and college oral English teaching. Although college oral English teaching has experienced years’ of revolution, there are still many problems. For example, students take part in oral practice inactively, teachers organize classroom activities inappropriately, etc., and these have always hindered the upgrading of teaching rate of oral English, which have arouse people’s concerns. This thesis intends to reason out the causes of anxiety, and discuss about the ways to reduce the degree of student’s anxiety from student’s aspect、teacher’s aspect and forms of classroom organization in order to improve both the teaching and learning of oral English.
Keywords：oral English teaching; anxiety; classroom teaching
Contents
1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………….1
2. Anxiety—Review of the Relevant Literature………………………………………2
2.1 The Definition of Anxiety and Language Anxiety…………………………………..2
2.2 Three Perspectives of Anxiety Study………………………………………………..3
2.2.1 Trait Anxiety………………………………………………………………………3
2.2.2 State Anxiety………………………………………………………………………4
2.2.3 Situation Specific Anxiety………………………………………………………...4
3. Sources of Language Anxiety……………………………………………………….5
3.1 Self-esteem……………………………………………….........................................5
3.2 Tolerance of ambiguity……………………………………………………………...6
3.3 Risk-taking……………………………………………….........................................6
3.4 Competitiveness …………………………………………........................................6
3.5 Social anxiety…………………………………………….........................................7
3.6 Test anxiety………………………………………………………………………....7
3.7 Identity and culture shock………………………………..........................................8
3.8 Beliefs………………………………………………&hel
lip;…………………………....8
3.9 Classroom activities and methods……………………………………………….....9
3.10 Instructor-Learner Interactions………………………............................................9
4. The impact of anxiety……………………………………………………………....9
4.1 Facilitating aspect…………………………………………………………………..9
4.2 Debilitating aspect ………………………………………………………………...10
4.3 Two interviews……………………………………………………………..……....10
5. The stratagies to conquer the anxiety………………………………………..…...12
5.1 From the student's aspect………………………………………………………….12
5.2 From the teacher's aspect………………………………………………………….13
5.3 From the classroom teaching techniques………………………………………….13
5.3.1 Offering Supportive Talk…………………………………………………..........13
5.3.2 Treating oral errors in classroom appropriately…………………………….…...14
5.3.3 Assigning Proper Tasks for Students and Adopting
Proper Teaching Ways to Complete the Tasks………………………………………...15
6. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….....16
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………….…..17
References…………………………………………………………………………….18
1. Introduction
As we have been students for many years and have participated in many English classes, it is inevitable for us to notice that in almost every class, there are some students who usually squirm in the last row and seldom initiate conversations. When asked to answer a question, they always keep silent or just give a very simple “Yes” or “No”. Besides this, the writer can often hear students’ complaints about their being anxious in English classes. They report that they always freeze up in oral presentations; they report that they “know” a certain grammar point but “forget” it during an oral exercise; they also report that they experience tightness in their chest, a pounding heat, and a sweaty palm when they have to speak in public. In fact, it is quite normal to experience some mild anxiety in our daily lives. However, some questions related to anxiety have been lingering in my mind. 1) Will heightened anxiety influence our language studies? 2) Is there any difference between anxiety and language anxiety? 3) How does the language anxiety influence our studies? 4) What are the effective ways to relieve language anxiety? Intrigued by these questions, the writer decides to make a research. Among the relevant literature, there are a lot of discussions about the relationship between language anxiety and foreign language learning. Lots of solutions are advanced to reduce language anxiety. No matter how effective these solutions are, its practicability is not proved in China. This thesis is to focus on language anxiety in the or al English course. The writer sincerely hopes that the results of the paper can contribute to the studies in this field. The thesis consists of 6 parts. Part 1 is the introduction. In part 2, the writer is to review the relevant literature. Three perspectives to study anxiety are introduced and it is made clear that situation specific perspective is the best way to study language anxiety. In part 3, the sources of language anxiety are identified. In part 4, the impact of anxiety is exactly described, both the facilitating aspects and debilitating aspects, and also two comparative examples are taken to make it better understood. In part 5, the author presents some strategies to conquer the anxiety, including the student’s aspect, the teacher’s aspect and classroom teaching techniques. Finally, it is the conclusion.
2. Anxiety—Review of the Relevant Literature
2.1 The Definition of Anxiety and Language Anxiety
Anxiety has been a long-discussed topic in psychology. But it is not until the 1980s that researchers in TES/TEF have gradually adjusted their focus from “teacher-centered” to “learner-centered” where anxiety finally caught much attention.
Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope5, anxiety is described as “subjective, consciously perceived feelings of apprehension and tension, accompanied by or associated with activation or arousal of the autonomic nervous system.” The common place of these psychological definitions is that they mostly refer to a transient emotional state or condition that features feelings of tension and apprehension. This emotional state, with both positive and negative aspects, motivates and facilitates as well as disrupts and inhibits people’s cognitive process, such as learning.
Most of people have experienced tightness in their chest, a pounding heart, and a pit in their stomach. Anxiety causes people to have a headache, a stomachache, to sweat, to have an urge to urinate. We all know what it is like to get tense before addressing a crowd, to get weak-kneed in front of an opposite sex, to freak out around snakes, etc. In fact, it is quite normal to experience some mild anxiety in our daily lives. However, heightened anxiety is emotionally painful. It disrupts people’s daily functioning. For some people, the previous mentioned occasions are not rare and isolated. Anxiety has already become a constant and dominant force that severely disrupts the quality and enjoyment of their lives and goes far beyond the mere occasional so-called “nervousness.”
However, anxiety studied in psychology is not exactly the same as anxiety in language learning. In psychology, anxiety has many types, but in language learning, it refers to language anxiety.
Language anxiety is confined to the second language learning area. Referring to its definition, Horwitz et al. [1]125 have warned that “second language research has
neither adequately defined foreign language anxiety nor described its specific effects on foreign language learning.” Some agree that language anxiety is repressed distress of the past, the personal hurt, particularly of childhood, that has been denied so that individual can survive emotionally. However, we can't sense the difference between anxiety and language anxiety from this definition. Gardner and MacIntyre60 defines it as “fear or apprehension occurring when a learner is expected to perform in the second or foreign language.” As to the definitions above, these researchers agree that language anxiety is situation specific, experienced during second language performance.
The definition adopted by
this thesis is the one advanced by Horwitz [3]87, who defines it as “a salient self-awareness, belief and sentiment connected with classroom language learning, which occurs during the learning process.” In this definition, anxiety is not just confined to “fear” or “apprehension” as other definitions. Its domain is broadened into “salient self-awareness, belief and sentiment”. Besides, it clearly tells us that language anxiety is connected with classroom language learning and it is situation specific.
2.2 Three Perspectives of Anxiety Study
From the review of the literature, several researches have been conducted to testify the role of anxiety in language learning. Of all these studies, three perspectives to the study of anxiety are identified as trait, state, and situation specific.
2.2.1 Trait Anxiety
Trait anxiety may be defined as an individual’s likelihood of becoming anxious in any situation 41. It is best viewed as an aspect of personality. Trait anxiety has been shown to impair cognitive functioning, to disrupt memory, to lead to avoidance behaviors, to have several other effects. The most used scales are Manifest Anxiety Scale and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) (Spielberger and associates). A lot of anxiety researches have demonstrated the pervasive influence that anxiety can have on cognitive, affective and behavioral functioning. However, this approach has its own flaws. The scale, STAI, has four subscales, referring to anxiety experienced in social situations, during written tests, in novel situations and in dangerous situations. Two persons, having similar trait anxiety score, may react differently in the same situation because the scores of the four sub-scales comprising the final score may differ dramatically. Therefore, if this approach is employed, the distinction between these two persons is not revealed.
2.2.2 State Anxiety
State anxiety is apprehension experienced at a particular moment, for example, prior to giving lectures. An individual with high trait anxiety scores is likely to experience state anxiety in anxiety-provoking situations. However, this approach also has its flaws. MacIntyre and Gardner[10]85 criticized state anxiety scales for skirting the issue of the source of the reported anxiety. In the state anxiety scales, instead of asking, “Did this situation make you nervous?”, they ask, “Are you nervous now?” A lot of elements besides the situation element can contribute to an individual’s response. In general, it is assumed that the situation contributes most to the response. But our conclusion can not be based on an assumption. With state anxiety assessment, the subject is not asked to attribute the experience to any particular source.
2.2.3 Situation Specific Anxiety
In this approach, individuals are tested for their anxiety reactions in a well-defined situation such as public speaking, writing examination, oral test, etc. An advantage of this approach is in clearly delineating the situation of interest for the respondent108.
In conclusion, the first perspective considers anxiety as a general personality trait that is relevant across several situations. The second perspective is interested in the here-and-now experience of anxiety as an emotional state. The third perspective examines the specific anxiety that occurs consistently with a well-defined given situation.
“Until recently, the trait and state approaches were commonly taken; however, their inability to capture the essence of foreign language anxiety or to satisfactorily demonstrate a role for anxiety in the language learning process seems to be leading research toward the situation specific pe
rspective ” [10]110.
3. Sources of Language Anxiety
3.1 Self-Esteem
Self-esteem is a self-judgment of worth or value, based on feelings of efficacy, a sense of interacting effectively with one’s own environment. Efficacy implies that some degree of control exists within oneself. Unsuccessful language learners often have lower self-esteem than successful language learners. Whether this affects their overall self-esteem or only their situational self-esteem partly depends on how important language learning is to the individuals involved. Self-esteem is vulnerable when the learner perceives himself or herself as very competent in the native language and totally inadequate or limited in the target language. Horwitz, Horwitz and cope63.
3.2 Tolerance of Ambiguity
Tolerance of ambiguity is the acceptance of confusing situations. Second language learning has a great deal of ambiguity about meanings, referents and pronunciation, and this can often raise language anxiety. Therefore, a degree of ambiguity-tolerance is essential for language learners. Students who are able to tolerate moderate levels of confusion are likely to persist longer in language learning than students who are overly frightened by the ambiguities inherent in learning a new language.
3.3 Risk-Taking
Students who are highly anxious about the frequent ambiguities of language learning often suffer reduced risk-taking ability. It is more useful for language learners to take moderate but intelligent risks, such as guessing meanings based on background knowledge and speaking up despite the possibility of making occasional mistakes, rather than taking no risks at all or taking extreme, uninformed risks. Language students who fear ambiguity or whose self-esteem is low, frequently ‘freeze up’, allow their inhibitions to take over completely. Decreases in risk-taking frequently occur when students feel extreme discomfort in the language classroom. Students who avoid risks are stalled by actual or anticipated criticism from others or by self-criticism that they themselves supply. When they do not have enough practice, their language development becomes seriously stunted.
3.4 Competitiveness
Using diary studies of language learners, Bailey asserted that competitiveness can lead to language anxiety. This happens when language learners compare themselves to others or to an idealized self-image, which they can rarely attain. Scarcella and Oxford [14]60 agreed that competitiveness can relate to language anxiety but suggested that this link does not occur in all students. Some students particularly those in competitive cultures, thrive on competition. The emotional import of competitiveness for a given individual depends on the learning style preferences of the student, the precise nature of the competition, and the demands and rewards of the environment.
3.5 Social Anxiety
Social anxiety can include speech anxiety, shyness, stage fright, embarrassment, social-evaluative anxiety and communication apprehension352obs erved communication apprehension in ESL/EFL classrooms.
3.6 Test Anxiety
Test anxiety can be part of social anxiety, particularly in an evaluative situation where the student is asked to communicate in the target language. However, test anxiety can occur in noncommunicative situations, too. Test anxiety is ‘the tendency to become alarmed about the consequences of inadequate performance on a test or other evaluation’, regardless of whether the fears are realistic. Students with test anxiety frequently experience cognitive interference and have a difficult time focusing on the task at hand.
3.7 Identity and Culture Shock
Identification with a language group or target culture implies that the learner is an insider, a member of the ‘club’ of French, Spanish, German or Chinese speakers. Young [9]426 suggested that anxiety is lower (that is. the affective filter is reduced) if a student feels such identification, and anxiety is higher if the student does not identify with the language group. Paradoxically, for other learners anxiety can arise because of over-identification with the language group and the concurrent feeling of loss of personal identity. This idea is similar to Guiora’s theory of language ego and Clarke’s theory of clash of consciousness.
Anxiety about losing one’s own identity can be part of culture shock. Culture shock is defined as ‘a form of anxiety that results from the loss of commonly perceived and understood signs and symbols of social intercourse’. Culture shock can involve some or all of these symptoms: emotional regression, physical illness, panic, anger, hopelessness, self-pity, lack of confidence, indecision, sadness, alienation, a sense of deception, a perception of ‘reduced personality’, and glorification of one’s own native culture. However, if handled effectively, culture shock can become a cross-cultural learning opportunity involving increased cultural awareness, increased self-awareness and reintegration of personality.
3.8 Beliefs
Research suggests that the beliefs of both learners and instructors are linked to language anxiety (and possibly to learner performance through instructors’ classroom procedures and students’ responses to those procedures, discussed later). Foreign language learners in Horwitz’s437.
3.9 Classroom Activities and Methods
Koch and Terrell found that more than half of their subjects reported oral skits and oral presentations in front of the class as the most anxiety-producing activities and that oral quizzes and being called on to respond orally were also anxiety-producing. Similar results were found by Horwitz and Young426. Some teaching methods, such as Community Language Learning, can reduce language anxiety for many learners.
3.10 Instructor-Learner Interactions
Many researchers relate language anxiety to instructor-learner inter-action [1]137; [9]75;[14]67. Harsh error correction, ridicule and the uncomfortable handling of mistakes in front of a class are among the most important instructor-learner interaction issues related to language anxiety. An important aspect of instructor-learner interaction has frequently been overlooked: style conflicts between teachers and students. Teacher-student learning style conflicts have been shown to relate to lower grades for students and to contribute to stress in the classroom.
4. Impacts of Anxiety on Language Learning
4.1 Facilitating Aspect
Some researches suggest that language anxiety is helpful or facilitating in some ways. Some believe it can keep students alert. A few studies show that facilitating anxiety is related to the following aspects:
-Anxiety can help them achieve high language proficiency and self-confidence among a handpicked group of excellent language learners;
-Anxiety can help students get good grades in regular French, German, and Spanish classes but not in audio-lingual classes.
Towards the facilitating aspect of anxiety, language researchers hold different views. Horwitz states that anxiety is only helpful for very simple language tasks, but not with more complicated learning such as language learning. Young[9]430 interviews language learning expert
s Rardin, Omaggio Hadly, Terrel and Krashen about their view on the helpfulness of language anxiety. Rardin states that a positive aspect of anxiety operates all the time, but we only notice when a negative imbalance occurs. Omaggio Hadly responds that a certain amount of tension might be useful for language learning, but she refuses to term this tension ‘anxiety’. Terrel refers to such tension as ‘attention’ rather than ‘anxiety’.
4.2 Debilitating Aspect
Though some literature asserts that a positive aspect of anxiety exists, most researches show a negative relationship between anxiety and language learning. It is believed that anxiety poses several potential problems for students of a foreign language because it can interfere with the acquisition, intention, and production of the new language. The negative aspect of anxiety is sometimes called “debilitating anxiety” because it interferes learner’s performance in many ways, both indirectly through worry and self-doubt and directly by reducing participation and creating overt avoidance of the target language. Anxious students are never eager to study and in some cases skip class entirely to alleviate their anxiety. The anxious language learners experience apprehension, worry, even dread. They have difficulty in concentrating, become forgetful. Debilitating anxiety can be related to plummeting, motivation, negative attitudes and beliefs, and language performance difficulties.
Gardner and MacIntyre[12]10state that the strongest negative correlate of language
achievement is anxiety. The following is a summary, showing the negative correlation of anxiety.
-Anxiety is negatively correlated with grades in language courses;
-Proficiency test performance is also negatively correlated with anxiety;
-The more anxious, the poorer performance in speaking and writing tasks;
-The more anxious, the less self-confidence in language learning;
-The more anxious, the lower self-esteem (the judgment of one’s own worth).
4.3 Two Interviews
Interview 1
Xiao yang is a sophomore in our university, his major is machine automation. One day, I happened to meet him at our school square.
A: Xiao yang, why are you lingering here? It’s class time now.
B: Er…, yes, I should be in my oral English class right now, but I skip it.
A: What’s wrong?
B: I find it really boring! I have no interest in speaking English at all.
A: But you always do well in exams.
B: Just in paper exams, it’s true I can get high mark, except oral test. I’m a total failure in my oral English, I don’t like to speak it out, and actually, I’m afraid to speak in front of other classmates, and I always sit at the back front of the classroom in case the teacher calls me. Day by day, I lose my interest in English, my English test mark is not so high anymore. I have almost lost my confidence for English.
A: What a pity! You can’t allow this to happen again. I think your key problem is your anxiety towards speaking English, if you can conquer your anxiety in speaking English publicly, and won’t be afraid to make mistakes, I think your oral English will improve in the near future, your confidence will also come back. And naturally, you will regain your interest in English.
B: Maybe I should take your suggestion and have a try, for I have been troubled by it for a long time and I really want to make a break. Thank you so much for brighting me up!
A: It’s my pleasure! Hope to hear your good news! Bye!
B: Goodbye! I should go back to my class.
Interview 2
Miss Lu is a college English teacher in our university, and she is also my director, I came to visit her in her spare time.
A: Good afternoon, Miss Lu! I’d like to know something which is real happened in your oral class, hope you can give me some materials.
B: Ok! My pleasure!
A: How do you organize your oral class?
B: I usually pick out a topic that students may be interested in, and give them some materials about it through pictures or videos, include some useful words、phrases and sentences; then if necessary, I divide them into several groups, and they practise dialogues themselves. After that, I often call somebody to present in class to share his ideas with other classmates.
A: Yeh, you’re very considerate, I can see you have tried your best to help students to speak out, and give them chances as much as possible to practice. However, did you come across some problems during your teaching?
B: Of course! Although I have planned my class well, students’ cooperate is very important. I find some students don’t open their mouth often; some students are very timid, when they stand up, their face turns red, their body becomes stiff, their hand shakes; even some of them never speak a word. When I look at them, I feel sad and think it over and over how can I help them to open their mouth and speak English lou
dly.
A: So what causes them the speechless students?
B: I think language anxiety takes the most part of the reason. At first, they feel anxiety at English class, they dare not to speak English in public, so they speak English as little as possible in class. Gradually, they are used to close their mouth in oral class and pay no attention and attach no importance to oral speaking.
A: What a tragedy! We should have a revolution to correct this classroom atmosphere and students’ attitude, or all of our effort will be rewardless.
B: You’re right! Look! You are making your effort for this, hope all the teachers and students will realize it and move on together.
A: Thank you very much! I hope my paper will make a little contribution.
The student and the teacher mentioned above are the preventatives of the other students and teachers, for the others I have interviewed also hold the same opinion as the above two. From the interviews we can see that, anxiety is the key point that cause the students speak little English in class, and it brings mainly the debilitating effects, that hinders students’ learning and teachers’ teaching. So it is the difficulty we must fight for.
5. The stratagies to conquer the anxiety
5.1 From the student’s aspect
--- Understand that language anxiety episodes can be transient and do not inevitably develop into a lasting problem;
--- Strengthen our self-esteem and self-confidence, try our utmost to believe in ourselves;
--- Encourage ourselves to take a risk and be more open to the language ambiguity;
--- Relax ourselves through music, laughter, or games;
--- Be optimistic and practice positive self-talk (self-encouragement) and cognitive ‘reframing’ of negative or irrational ideas;
5.2 From the teacher’s aspect
I’d like to clarify the teachers into three groups: Lecturer, Teacher and Facilitator.
By Lecturer I mean a teacher in any educational context who has a knowledge of the topic taught but no special skill or interest in the techniques and methodology of teaching it. By Teacher I mean a teacher in any educational setting who has a knowledge of the topic and is also familiar with a range of methods and procedures for teaching it. By Facilitator I mean a teacher in any educational setting who understands the topic, is skilled in the use of current teaching methods and techniques, and who actively studies and pays attention to the psychological learning atmosphere and the inner processes of learning on a moment by moment basis, with the aim of enabling learners to take as much responsibility for their learning as they can. So teachers should try to work at the Facilitator level. The facilitation is holistic, that means everything counts: all aspects of the Facilitator’s presence including feelings, attitudes, thoughts, physical presence, movements, quality of attention, degree of openness and so on, have an effect in the learning atmosphere and on what possibilities within each group member are opened or closed at any moment. Only when teacher can pay attention to themselves’ inner and outer state, then adjust themselves to the class, and pay more attention to students feeling, can he/she be a Facilitator, and create a good learning atmosphere for students.
5.3 From the classroom teaching techniques
5.3.1 Offering Supportive Talk
Teaching technique is an essential tool to make the classroom interactive, and encourage the students to open their mouth and practice their oral ability. If the teacher is able to make students feel comfortable in doing so, affective aspects such as insecurity may be transformed into confidence and cooperation.
The teacher’s talk is not only a carrier of teaching forms and methods, but also a most important part of the language situation for learners. In addition, it may be the major source of comprehensible target language input the learner is likely to receive and an example to imitate. Whether the teacher’s talk is proper or not will have a positive or negative effect on learners’ out put and the production of communication ability.
Therefore, first of all, in the English class the teacher’s effective talk should be supportive rather than dominant, that is, to occupy as little time as possible, leaving students more opportunities to apply what they have learnt to practical communication. Too much occupation of the time by the teacher’s talk would only frustrate students’ initiative and restrain the development of students’ language potential and creativity.
Second, the teacher’s talk should be supportive for students. Communication breakdown is a very common feature in the English class. It often occurs because learners do not know a particular word or phrase or do not possess the appropriate communicative strategies. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to be sensitive to learner’s need and to offer supporti
ve help timely by intervening and feeding in the missing language.
5.3.2 Treating Oral Errors in Classroom Appropriately
One explanation of learners’ fear of errors is that in written English teaching and learning, learners are taught to be especially conscious of accuracy which, when applied in oral work is too difficult for them. This then arouses the learners’ strong anxiety, or “debilitating anxiety”. Being too anxious about errors makes many of our students choose to shut their mouths.
Errors are inevitable in language learning, because the error-making is the process of learning a new language. The question is if correcting is necessary in classroom, how does the teacher correct students’ errors? If teachers can adopt an attitude that mistakes are part of the language learning process and that everyone makes mistakes, students may feel at ease. Error correction is not avoidable and sometimes necessary; the key issue for the students is the manner of error correction. Therefore, as Omaggio Hadley [9]438 points out, teacher’s response to student’s performance should be neither a simple “right” or “wrong”, nor a simple “yes” or “no”. At the same time, teachers must carefully decide when, how often, and most importantly, how errors are corrected. Walz divides error correction into three distinct types: They are: (a) self-correction with the teacher’s help, (b) peer-correction, and (c) teacher correction. No matter in which way, consistency is the most important thing when addressing errors in the classroom. Without it, corrections will be offered arbitrarily, depending solely on the teacher’s patience, mood, motivation, or attitude. In short, errors are inevitable in the language classroom, but they should be addressed in a rational and consistent manner.
5.3.3 Assigning Proper Tasks for Students and Adopting Proper Teaching Ways to Complete the Tasks
In the English class, teaching and learning are conducted in the process of reaching the teaching goals by accomplishing various classroom tasks. Whether the goals can be successfully reached depends mainly on the appropriateness of the tasks and the way in which the tasks are conducted.
As to the appropriateness of the task, on one hand, if a task is too complex or incongruous, it is likely to induce confusion and an avoidance response. On the other hand, if it is too simple, it is likely to induce inactiveness and the feeling of being fooled. So according to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, care should be taken to match the requirement of any task to the cognitive level of which the learner is capable. Language tasks set by teachers should be neither too abstract for those who are not yet conceptually capable of functioning at this level, nor too simple in that the conceptual level is below the level of the learner’s competence. So it is clear that our English classroom tasks should be interesting and challenging so as to encourage curiosity and motivate learners to speak. It is important for teachers to help and encourage learners by actively involving them in the learning process, rather than seeing them as passive receivers of the language.
As to the way in which classroom tasks are conducted, mainly there are three kinds, competitive, individualistic and co-operative. Among these three methods, what the author most advocates is the co-operative method. Its advantages overweigh the other two. The competitive method will inevitably lower some learners’ self-efficacy and make anxious learners even more anxious. In an individualistic way, learners cannot get their communication ability fully developed. However, silent or inactive learners in the English class can benefit a lot from the group co-operative method: It can help reduce learners’ anxiety; it can promote interaction as students are placed in different roles; it helps to increase self-confidence and self-esteem; it provides comprehensible input and output; it helps increase motivation.
It is important to create a stress free learning environment where students are not afraid to speak and can enjoy communicating with others. We can achieve that by choosing appropriate tasks and adopting appropriate methods as mentioned above.
6. Conclusion
The above discussion of anxiety and college oral teaching is not totally comprehensive but it can serve our purpose to improve oral English learning and teaching, for it is one of the issues that both students and teachers have been paying much attention to. I just try my best to illustrate, to make it better understood, and find out some solutions. However, this is far from satisfaction, the key point is that all of our students and teachers and researchers should work hard on it, and carry out the better strategies. Only by this, can both the students and teachers reap real benefits.
Acknowledgements
My initia
l thanks go to my supervisor Lu Jing, who patiently supervised my dissertation, provided me very important materials and was at times very willing to offer me illuminating advice or suggestions. Without her help, I could not have finished this dissertation.
I am also indebted to other teachers and my classmates who have not only offered me their warm encouragements but also shared with me their ideas and books. They are Zhao Lingli, Xu Yuan, Wang Miao, Cui jingjing and many others.
My greatest personal debt is to my parents, who have cultivated a soul of sensitivity, hospitality, and honesty out of me, and offered a harbor of happiness and sweetness for me.
The remaining weakness and possible errors of the dissertation are entirely my own.
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