| Summary: | 碩士 === 南台科技大學 === 應用英語系 === 98 === The purposes of this study were to investigate: (a) the situation of junior high school student’s foreign language anxiety; (b) the differences between male and female student’s foreign language anxiety level; (c) the differences in foreign language anxiety among students with different English academic achievements; (d) the differences in foreign language anxiety among students with different English extra learning experience; (e) the difficulties or problems in English learning for junior high school students.
The subjects of the questionnaires in this study consisted of 64 EFL students of a junior high school student in Kaohsiung County. All the subjects were the eighth graders, including 27 male students and 37 female students. The instruments used in this study included questionnaire, student’s learning journal, teacher’s observation notes, informal interview, and interview. The questionnaire consisted of student’s background information, an adapted foreign language anxiety scale, and questions of learning difficulties and anxiety. Some of the data were analyzed by t-test and one-way ANOVA in the SPSS program; the other data were qualitatively analyzed. In addition, ten students with the highest degree of foreign language anxiety were interviewed about their experience and causes of foreign language anxiety. Then the interview data were analyzed qualitatively.
The major findings were as follows:
1. EFL junior high school students revealed a moderate level of anxiety on the foreign language anxiety scale. The most anxiety-provoking events in English classroom were being called upon to speak English and taking tests.
2. There were no significant differences between male and female students’ foreign language anxiety level in junior high school.
3. There were significant differences of student’s foreign language anxiety level among students with different English academic achievements. The higher the students’ foreign language anxiety was, the more likely they were to receive low grades.
4. Significant differences of foreign language anxiety were also found among students with different extra English learning experiences. Students with longer years of extra English learning experiences tended to posses lower level of foreign language anxiety.
5. Grammar, making sentences, and translating Chinese into English were the most mentioned difficulties among junior high school students in learning English.
Some limitations, implications, and suggestions for future research were provided at the end of the study.
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