Creating a Low—anxiety Foreign Language Environment

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  Abstract: Anxiety is one of the affective factors which influence foreign language learning. It refers to fear, apprehensions, annoyance or weariness occurring in the procedure of foreign language learning. It often appears when the learners are expected to perform in foreign language. Such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing. There are various carious causes from which anxiety arises. It may be related to the learners' individual characteristics, learning activities, teaching methods or learning tasks and so on. As the organizers of classroom activities, teachers should pay more attention to the changes of learners' affect, try to be good adjusters of the affect, make an effort to generate a low-anxiety environment conductive to high quality learning.
  【中图分类号】 G633.41 【文献标识码】 B 【文章编号】 1671-1297(2013)02-0176-02
  Ⅰ.Introduction
  Foreign language learning is controlled by environments. Among these environments, there are natural environment, social environment and classroom psychological environment. Chinese learners who learn English as a foreign language, for lack of real opportunity for them to communicate with others, often learn English in a language classroom. Their foreign language learning is a formal study form. Therefore, the classroom psychological environment is the most important factor which affects the language learning. It is related to the success of foreign language learning. Good classroom psychological environment can stimulate learners' motivation, facilitate learner autonomy, and enhance learners' interest in learning a foreign language. It will arouse learners' strong interest, so that the information can reach their language acquisition device easily. On the contrary, bad classroom psychological environment will cause the learners' negative emotion, such as annoyance, uneasiness, anxiety and so on. These negative affect will prevent the information from reaching the learners' language acquisition device.
  Although there goes a saying: “where there is pressure, there is power.” This is not absolutely true. I think that too much pressure often bring us negative affect, especially to the foreign language learners. Since most of them belong passive learners. Usually, the purpose for them to learn a foreign language is to pass certain examination, to obtain certain position, or to improve their social status. Once these purposes are reached, they will stop learning[1].
  Learners at high school in China, their aim of learning a foreign language is just to deal with the examination, in the hope that they can go to the college to further their study. However, there are millions of learners who take part in this kind of entrance examination. Not all of them are hopeful to enter the college and receive high education, to realize their ideal. So, some of the learners feel it on use to learn a foreign language. They are so hopeless that they lose their heart in learning English, they even drop English. Thus, it will bring many difficulties to our English teaching, and it is very bad for our teaching.   Moreover, social appraisal of teaching quality, to some extent, is decided by the number of the students who enter the higher school, the mark and the grade of their examination. Under this condition, with so much pressure, the teachers may exert some pressure on the learners while they are organizing some classroom teaching activities in the language teaching. They may make the classroom atmosphere nervous, and the learners' feeling of nervous can be stronger as the increasing of the pressure. Thus high-anxiety will come into being, and it will affect the learning of foreign language seriously. For a very long time, English language has been a deaf and dumb language in Chinese schools. Most can't speak English. They can only read and remember English after more than ten years' learning. Therefore, it is necessary for teachers to find out the right way to overcome learners' anxiety about foreign language learning.
  Ⅱ.Sources of language anxiety and strategies
  According to linguist Young's theory about language learning anxiety, there are six main sources from which language anxiety arises: (1) personal and interpersonal anxieties ; (2) learner beliefs about language learning;(3) instructor beliefs about language teaching; (4) instructor-learner interaction; (5 )classroom procedures ;(6) languagetesting[2]. According to these sources of language learning anxiety, instructors should combine their teaching with the fact of their learners, identify those students who are particularly anxious in foreign language class and then adopt some effective strategies to reduce language anxiety during the teaching procedures.
  2.1 The different between individual learners
  Different learners have different aptitude for language learning. Some learners were born with good aptitude for language learning, such as the ability of listening comprehension, the ability of imitation, the ability of inductive language learning, the ability of grammatical sensitivity and good memory[3]. Such learners can accept the knowledge and information they learned in the language classroom easily. For instance, when they learn the pronunciation, they can make correct pronunciation by listening to the teacher or listening to the tape for one or two times. They don't need to use phonetic theory to direct their pronunciation. They don't need to pay much attention to the size of their mouth shape, the position of tongue. While some of the learners can,t make correct pronunciation until they practice it repeatedly, with the direction of phonetic rules and gusts. This shows that learners are not all the same, they are different from each other. There are some individual differences among them. We can't compare them with one another, without considering the individual differences. Learners themselves should acknowledge that everyone has his own advantage and disadvantage, Don't think of others as perfect. One should be good at finding his advantage, confirm his achievement. Try to develop his advantage, try to use it to make up his disadvantage. Don't doubt his ability by comparing with others. The teachers should not hate the students who can't receive or learn by heart what they have learned, they must believe in the learners. They should believe that the learners can study well by effort. They mustn't express their complaint by saying some unkind words. Try their best to help the learners to know about themselves adequately, reinforce their studying explore some effective strategies for them to study. Avoid the learners,anxiety aroused by over complaint.   2.2 Firm belief for language learning
  Language learning is a serious endeavor perseverance and involving anxiety and be sure to give reassurance[4]. In the course of learning, Chinese learners learn their foreign language in the language classroom, teachers often teach foreign language by creating some scenes, making models, then get the students to imitate similar sentence or dialogues, add a lot of exercises. The students can,t avoid meeting some difficulties, feeling unnatural or they may feel shy. Moreover, they have to do thousands of exercises in order to consolidate the knowledge they have learned. There must be some errors in doing exercise. Errors may also appear when the learners answer the teachers,questions. Facing these difficulties, learners must be brave to struggle with the difficulties, find out the actual cause and look for proper ways to solve problems, defeat difficulties in a positive attitude. When you are tired of doing exercises, when you meet some troubles and get very angry, you should learn to control your mood, try to disperse your attention, such as listening to music, going out for a walk, playing basketball, ect. Don't be self-abandoned. Because anger or fear may lead to anxiety, continuous anxiety will impede language learning. Teachers should encourage the learners; teach them to keep in mind that failure is the mother of success. Don't give more harsh error correction, ridicule and the uncomfortable handling of mistakes in front of a class. Try to protect the learners, self-respect, get them to set up their confidence with the language learning.
  2.3 New teaching belief
  There are no students who can,t be taught well. Teachers should be strict with their learners. Meanwhile, they must learn to excuse the learners, too. During the language learning, some learners can't avoid making mistakes. For example, when they have learnt a rule for forming plural forms,they will make plural by adding “s”, without paying attention to some exceptions. They say We saw two mouse instead of We saw two mice. Because of the affection of their mother tongue, they say I have 15 years old instead of I am 15 years old. The former example belongs to overgeneralization errors, and the later belongs to transfer errors. We teachers should not complain about the surface of these errors. We mustn't think that the learners are too stupid to teach. And we mustn't laugh at the errors they made, either. On the contrary, we should analyze the errors carefully. Explain to the learners that there are different ways of expressing in different languages. Draw their attention to the exceptions to the rules. So the learners won't lose their spirit of risk-taking for being afraid of making mistakes. Once they lose the spirit of risk-taking, they will be likely to copy their classmates, homework. They even copy other students' composition. It is not helpful for training the students to learn creatively.   2.4 Communication with the learners
  Many language teachers maintain the belief that they should be directive, authoritarian and even intimidating and that they must correct every error. However, these behaviors can lead to language anxiety[5]. Learners should be equal to the teachers. The relationship between learners and teachers must be equal. Their existence is depended on each other and facilitated each other. As a teacher, he mustn't be grandiosity for his capacity in certain field and turn a blind eye to the learners, turn a deaf ear to the advice they gave. This kind of teaching attitude will arouse the learners' protest and disaffection. It also may arouse contradiction between learners and teachers. It is harmful to the language teaching. So it is very important to give ear to the learners' need, try to shrink the gap between the learners and teachers, get along well with learners, to be their good teachers and close friends. Only when the learners feel that their teacher is easy to approach can they diminish their language anxiety.
  2.5 Classroom activities flexible and cooperative
  Not only speaking but also writing, reading and listening can create learners' fear. Generally, low levels of verbal production, lacking of volunteering and inability to answer the teachers' question are the main reasons for which learners' attention can be concentrated by asking individual student to answer question one after another in the classroom. In fact, this way of teaching often make the classroom atmosphere nervous, and can't reach the expected result. If the teachers pay no attention to their teaching methods, use only one approach from the beginning to the end of the class constantly, such a single form of teaching often make the classroom atmosphere dull, and the learners may feel exhausted easily, they can' t concentrate their attention for a long time. The number of information they can accept in class is limited. Teachers should arrange his lecture time reasonably, clarify classroom goals and adopt flexible, variegated teaching methods to adjust the learners' attention, so that they can enjoy their language learning.
  Comparing with individual activities, cooperative learning has many benefits in foreign language learning. It can avoid shyness or fear of failure caused by asking individual suddenly, it can lower anxiety in the language classroom. Teachers can divide the learners into groups, get them to work cooperatively, to learn and discuss together. For each of the members in the groups may have his own advantage, they can learn from each other in the course of cooperative learning. By doing this, they build their self-confidence and self-esteem; provide opportunities for them to develop themselves.   2.6 The correct test
  Test is a means that often used for supervising
  the learners to go over their lessons in time and accumulate the knowledge they have learned. It is also used for checking how much knowledge the students have grasped, so that the teachers can understand the learners' level. But some learners can't treat it correctly. They often afraid of failing in the test and become over-anxious every time. They give up resting or sacrifice their rest time, review their lessons overtime. As a result, they can't sleep well and have no appetites. This affects their health seriously. Someone who does very well in the foreign language classroom may get bad result in the test. If he or she is a student with strong self-respect, the failure of test will be a fatal hit. He or she may lose motivation to continue to study. So teachers can't valuate a student b y his mark. They even can't despise a student for his failure in one test, or blame him seriously.
  In order to get the student free from test anxiety. Firstly, we should help the learners to analyze their failure, find out the right reason. Learners should not always attribute the failure to luck, parents, teachers or difficulty of task instead of attributing it to themselves. They don't pay enough effort, or don't study carefully. This way of attributing may weaken learners' will, and the learners may lose their sense of learning responsibility, lower the degree of effort. Secondly, we may help a learner to work out a suitable aim for his learning. Make sure he can reach the aim by his effort. Once the aim is reached, he will obtain happiness of success. In this way, he will enhance his interests and belief of studying, improve his ability of learning and desire to continuous learning.
  Conclusion :
  Language anxiety, one of the affective factors of language learning, it is a big obstacle during the foreign language learning. It is caused by a lot of causes. It is most often focused on listening and speaking, with difficulty in speaking in class being the most common complaint of anxious students[6].In order to overcome the obstacle, create a low-anxiety environment for foreign language learning, teachers should observe learners' reflection, check their teaching methods and means, see if they are acceptable for the learners together, eliminate their anxiety about language learning as soon as possible, explore every opportunity for learners to express themselves, create for language use in the classroom. Not to teach a foreign language just for reading and remembering it, but for communicative use.
  References
  [1] Hedge Tricia, Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom (Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2002)22
  [2] Liu Shoulan and Qin Hui, Teaching English as a Foreign Language——Current Issues (Kunming: Yunnan University Press, 2002)111
  [3] Hedge Tricia, Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom (Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2002)17
  [4] Ibid. 24
  [5] Arnold Jane, Affect in Language Learning (Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000)65
  [6] Spolsky Bernard, Conditions for Second Language Learning (Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2000)114
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