A Study on Mobile APP in Students’ English Speaking Learning in Chinese Middle school

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume IV, Issue X, October 2020 | ISSN 2454–6186

A Study on Mobile APP in Students’ English Speaking Learning in Chinese Middle school

  Yan Ge^1,2, Cao Xiaowei^1
1College of Foreign Studies, Hubei Normal University
²Tianmen Hangzhou Huatai Middle School

Abstract: Oral English learning is an important part of English learning. However, there are still many students who are full of anxiety, tension and other negative emotions in oral English learning in China. In order to study the effect of “Oral 100” app on relieving junior high school students’ oral English anxiety, 150 junior high school students from a Chinese middle school were surveyed. The study found that students in this school have learning anxiety in their oral English class. “Oral 100” app affects and alleviates junior middle school students’ oral learning anxiety in the following three aspects: learning progress anxiety in oral class, speech anxiety in oral class and oral evaluation anxiety.

Key words– “Oral 100” app; students; English speaking; anxiety; Chinese students

I. INTRODUCTION

Fluent oral English is the guarantee of communication. Oral English has become one of the standards for English learners to measure their abilities.
The emotional attitude is an important assessment standard of the new English curriculum standard in China. Numerous studies have shown that emotional factors are involved. It plays an important role in the process of learning a foreign language while it is very common that the phenomenon of anxiety appears in the process of learning a foreign language (e.g.[1]). Therefore, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to further study how to relieve junior high school students’ oral learning anxiety from the perspective of emotional teaching.
In recent years, the Internet has developed rapidly and penetrated into all aspects of people’s life. In the context of the development of educational informatization, mobile phones have gradually become an important tool for students to learn, and educational apps have emerged. These apps provide a new learning platform and communication space for students.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

A. Research on Anxiety in Oral English Learning

Horwitz formally put forward the concept of foreign language anxiety in 1986 and defined it as “the synthesis of perception, belief and other related emotional states occurring in the classroom language learning environment”(e.g.[2]). For learners, anxiety is an important change among many emotional factors. For students, learning anxiety has become an unavoidable problem in the learning process (e.g.[3]).
With the in-depth study of foreign language learning anxiety, scholars at home and abroad have put forward the causes of anxiety. Zhang in the Study on the Relationship between the Internal Factors of Anxiety and Oral English Learners pointed out that student’s inherent subjective factor is the main cause of the student spoken language learning anxiety (e.g.[4] ). Different from Zhang, Chen, a professor at Nanjing University, divided anxiety into two types: personality type and environment type.

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