Chapter OneIntroduction
1.1Purpose of the Research
As we all know, teacher-centered class has played a very important role for along time. The previous researchers consider the effectiveness of the languageteaching and learning. The cognitive aspect is their main focus, such as how toimprove the students’ ability of listening, speaking, reading and learning and how toimprove the students’ scores in the examinations. However, owning to thedevelopment of the second language acquisition and the humanistic psychology, theresearchers begin to consider the affective factors which influence the languagelearning. The learning process will be constructed well if the teacher combines thecognitive factors and the affective factors together. Affective factors, such as anxiety,have a more lasting effect on learners’ learning process than cognition. The higherlevel anxiety of the students will cause the negative effect easily. Thus, the learnerswill be discouraged in their process of learning language. Therefore, the authorfocuses on anxiety in foreign language learning. Obviously in the classroom teaching,the teacher plays an important role and will show different types of feedback in theteaching process. Thus, do the teachers’ feedbacks have influences on the students’anxiety? What kinds of feedback can lead to the students’ anxiety? These questionscan predict whether the learners learn the foreign language effectively in some degree.Through a case study, which has carried out in Zhoukou Wenchang Junior MiddleSchool of Hennan Province, the author investigates the effects of the teachers’ feedback on students’ anxiety. The main purposes of this paper are to answer thequestions above and find out which types of the feedback will influence the students’anxiety strongly. Some suggestions will be given to alleviate the students anxiety.
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1.2Significance of the Research
Researchers have attached much attention to the cognitive side of languagelearning in the past thirty years, such as the causes of the anxiety, the effect of anxietyand the relationship between language learning and anxiety etc. However, the affectiveside is emphasized by the scholars with the development of humanistic psychology.They have come to know that the affective side of learning is not in opposition to thecognitive side (Arnold 2006). In English New Curriculum Standards (2001)promulgated by the Ministry of Education, affective factors are very important inlanguage learning which the students need to study. And they are also very importantin language teaching which the teacher should stress in the process of teachingcontents and teaching objectives. Therefore, teachers should take into considerationthe affect factors in their language teaching, especially the influences of the teachers’feedback both inside and outside of the class.The Junior One students in the adolescence are active to explore new things.And they may suddenly lose confidence when meeting difficulties. They begin tostudy foreign language systematically and suffer the anxiety easier. Therefore, it isimportant to help the junior middle school students to overcome language anxiety.
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Chapter TwoLiterature Review
2.1 Theoretical Foundation
Krashen’s Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theory consists of fivehypotheses which are related with each other very closely. The first hypothesis isAcquisition-learning Hypothesis. The second one is Natural Order Hypothesis. Thethird one is Monitor Hypothesis. The fourth one is Input Hypothesis. And the last oneis Affective Filter Hypothesis which will explain further in the following part. As forthe anxiety, there are two major related theories. One is affective filter hypothesis andthe other is humanistic psychology. In the following part, these two theories will bepresented. Krashen (1985) suggests that the input knowledge will be hindered orpromoted by the affective factors in the language acquisition device. Krashen believesthere can be a mental block which block the comprehensible input when the learnerreceive the knowledge in their language acquisition. the affective filter refers to themental block in the process of language acquisition. For the language learners, if theyhave higher motivation and confidence, the filter will be lower. Then the inputknowledge will get through the language acquisition device and be fully utilized. Onthe contrary, the filter is high and it will prevent the language input. Anxiety, which asone of the affective factors, is helpful to the affective filter.
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2.2 Foreign LanguageAnxiety
In foreign language learning, anxiety is one of the most important affectivefactors. The subjective feelings, such as upset, nervousness, afraid, panic and tensionetc, are usually related with the students’ anxiety. A common phenomenon should benoticed in daily life that some people perform more nervously or anxiously than others.Gradually this type of students would be ignored or discriminated without reasonableinstructions. Therefore, it is necessary to know the definition, its classification and thecauses which lead to anxiety. Thus some solutions can be found out. In the process of the foreign language learning, learners will feel nervous,uneasy or anxious, which is the phenomenon of language anxiety. Gardner andLambert (1972) states language anxiety more directly with language learning, whichdefines the language learning as a “fear or apprehension occurring when a learner isexpected to perform in the second or foreign language”. Horwitz (1986) claims thatthe foreign language anxiety is the mood of tension, apprehension, nervousness andworry. This subjective feelings are related closely with the autonomic nervous system,such as the happiness, excitement and nervousness etc. Arnold (2006) states that “it isassociated with negative feelings such as uneasiness, frustration, self-doubt,apprehension and tension”.
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Chapter Three Methodology.........15
3.1 Research questions.......15
3.2 Setting.....16
3.3 Participants.....16
3.4 Research Instruments..........17
3.4.1AQuestionnaire of FLCAS.....17
3.4.2 A Questionnaire of the Students’Anxiety Caused by Teachers’Feedback........ 18
3.4.3 Naturalistic Observation.........18
3.5 Data Collection and DataAnalysis..........18
Chapter Four Findings and Discussion......20
4.1 Findings of Questionnaires........20
4.2 Findings of Naturalistic Observation.......29
4.3 Summary........32
Chapter V Conclusion..... 35
5.1 Findings of the Research.....35
5.2 Implications of the Research......36
5.3 Limitations of the Research.......36
5.4 Recommendations of the Research..........37
5.5 Suggestions....37
Chapter FourFindings and Discussion
4.1 Findings of Questionnaires
This part is mainly focused on the general situation of the students’ anxiety andthe different anxiety percentage of the different items among the students.The FLCAS which consists of 33 items is designed by Horwitz et al. (1986).However, the author has amended it according to the real situation in the class. Thus,the author delete the item 14 and item 32. There are 31 items left. Because the studentsare in Junior One, the author uses the Chinese version to do this investigation in orderto avoid some misunderstandings. The table 4.1 is the basic information of the FLCAS from the class. There are 50students in Class Eight, Grade Seven, which is made up by 19 female students and 31male students. The questionnaire of the Chinese version is finished under the detailedinstruction of the teacher. Once the students doubt some items or have questions, theycan put up their hands and ask the teacher immediately, which ensure the students toget the proper answers. After they complete the questionnaire, the author will ask thegroup leader to collect back.
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Conclusion
The aim of this study is to confirm the influence of teachers feedback on thelearners anxiety. In the present research, the author adopts the questionnaires andclassroom investigation to do the study. The participants are 50 junior middle schoolstudents. Through the data collection and the analysis, the author draw a conclusionthat the teachers feedback has some influence on students’ anxiety in languagelearning. And there are some types of teachers feedback which commonly usedinfluence the learners anxiety.In this chapter, the author will firstly present the main findings of this research.And then some implications and limitations of the research are followed. At last, thepaper will give some recommendations and suggestions for future study.At the basic of previous researches and discussions, this study also conclude itsown summary as follows.
(1) The teachers’feedback do have influences on the middleschool students’ foreign language anxiety. Through the analysis of the questionnairesand the classroom investigation, the influences of the teachers feedback on thestudents are existed. Some types of feedback have a severe effects on students, such ascorrect directly, comparing with others and criticizing and so on.
(2) There aredifferent types of teachers’ feedback in classroom teaching to the performance of thestudents. The teacher should choose different and proper types of feedback to evaluatethe learners. And the teacher should avoid the negative feedback, such as directlycriticizing or humiliate in the face of the whole class.
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Reference (omitted)