Abstract:Questioning is known as an important instructional strategy. Questions are used to focus students’ attention, to invite thinking and imaginations, to check the understanding, to stimulate recall of information, to challenge students, and to asses learning. However, students show high anxiety about them. Here anxiety refers to Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (FLCA). The item Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety was first coined by Horwitz (1986). He discussed the symptoms and consequences of FLCA. Unfortunately, he said little about the causes. Though many other researchers and scholars study the FLCA, most of their work is literature review or declaration of effects. Besides, there is little study focusing on the relationship between anxiety and the classroom questions. Therefore, this paper attempts to study major causes of question-triggered anxiety in the high school classes and find out methods to reduce the anxiety.
The instruments of the research are questionnaire survey, interviews and classroom observation. This research discusses the causes of students’ question-trigged anxiety by questionnaire survey and interviews. In addition, classroom observation is adopted to analyze the defects of questionings in the contemporary English classes, and to work out pedagogical implications about classroom questioning. The results of the research demonstrate that causes of question-triggered anxiety are: fear of errors and mistakes, fear of negative evaluation, students’ self- esteem and beliefs about language learning, students’ low language aptitude, students’ character, tense classroom atmosphere, incorrect questioning and complex classroom activities. Teacher can reduce students’ anxiety by promoting students’ mental adjustment, designing the questions rationally, giving effective feedbacks, making proper error correction, and creating a friendly classroom atmosphere.
Key Words: Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety, Classroom Questioning, Questions
摘要:课堂提问是一种重要的教学策略。老师通过适当的课堂提问来集中学生注意力，启发学生思考，进行知识复习，调动学生学习积极性以及检验学习成果。然而笔者通过观察发现，大部分学生对于课堂提问表现出过度的焦虑。这种焦虑影响了课堂教学的正常进行。焦虑一词最早出现在Horwitz（1986）一篇关于二语习得研究的文章中。自此以后，在外语教学领域中出现了一系列关于焦虑产生原因以及影响的研究。在这些研究的基础上，笔者将焦虑与课堂提问相结合，试图通过探求课堂焦虑与课堂提问的关系，提出关于降低焦虑的可行性教学建议。
本研究主要采用的研究方法是问卷调查，个人访谈和课堂观察。笔者通过调查和访谈的形式探讨出学生外语课堂提问产生焦虑的原因，并通过课堂观察来找出当今英语课堂所存在的一些普遍的课堂提问误区如等待时间过短，缺乏适当的问题修饰，采用错误的纠错方式等。 研究结果表明，高中生对于课堂提问的焦虑产生的原因包括：错误恐惧，负评价恐惧，学生自卑倾向，学生语言能力不足， 紧张的课堂气氛紧张，教师错误的提问方式以及过于复杂的课堂活动。根据研究结果以及教学理论，笔者概括出可行的降低焦虑的教学建议：重视焦虑本身促进学生达到自我心理调适，设置多样的提问方式，完善反馈并合理纠错，创设友好和睦的课堂环境。
关键词：外语课堂焦虑，问题， 课堂提问
