Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the thesis
As the attention of foreign language teaching activities gradually shifted fromlearners' external environment to the study of the internal factors, the status of learnercentered has been established in the college English classroom. Therefore，there appeara large number of researches on individual learners' personality difference, cognitivestyles，英语论文范文，learning motivation, learning strategies at home and abroad. At the same time，the importance of learners' affective factors in learning process and classroom has alsoattracts researcher and teachers' attention. Is has been recognized that some positiveemotions, such as strong learning motivation, positive learning attitude，英语毕业论文，firm faith andhealthy personality will have positive influence on learning，however, other emotionssuch as anxiety, prohibition, stress even feelings of fear will hinder language input andknowledge construction in the process of learning. So this thesis attempts to study oneof the most important learners' affective attitudes: anxiety.Generally speaking, when someone cannot overcome threats of obstacles whichhave made their confidence and pride tumbled or unable to reach their target for longterm, the mood of nervous and frighten formed and the sense of failure and guiltincreased, this kind of emotion is called anxiety. However, anxiety also exists inlanguage learning, the American psychologist, Horwitz (1986) was the first to regardforeign language anxiety as a single and special phenomenon in foreign languagelearning. He points out that foreign language learning anxiety is a kind of complexpsychological phenomenon. It is only relevant to classroom language learning anddifferent from other anxieties.
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1.2 Objectives and Significance of the Thesis
Since 1980s，the research on second language acquisition has made substantialprogresses, anxiety is regarded as one of the most crucial affective variables. There aresome studies concerning the issue of listening anxiety in foreign language study.However，it is a pity that few published empirical researches on foreign languagelearning anxiety can be found taking junior middle school students as subjects.By studying the literatures in foreign language study，we discovered that a largenumber of students are afraid of English listening. This kind of emotion can not only-break student's courage but also influence their study. Junior middle school students is aspecial group, they are English beginners, so they may have some differentcharacteristics from college students and other groups. Therefore，the author thinks itvery necessary to do some studies in English listening anxiety by taking junior middleschool students as subjects.Firstly, this paper attempts to take junior middle school students as study samplesand discusses whether there are differences on gender as well as age differences inlearning anxiety.Secondly, as we presupposed that foreign language learning anxiety exists amongjunior middle school students，what we shall get to know is in what aspect and to whatextent that anxiety represents so as to find the cause.Finally，on the basis of these findings，the thesis will give some methods suggestedreducing students' listening anxiety which may help them study English better andeasier.
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Chapter Two Literature Re
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