How to Help English Learners Reduce Speaking Anxiety

With the implementation of NECS, the focus of English teaching has shifted from teacher-centeredness to student-centeredness. Students’ individual factors especially affection are emphasized. Among these, learning anxiety, as one of the most significant affective factors, has great impact on foreign language learning. Since English is seen as a tool for communication, it’s necessary to cultivate students’ oral English and communicative competence. However, it is inevitable that they will feel anxious when confronted with problems in the process of language learning. Thereby, some negative emotions such as tension and fear occur. These debilitative anxieties deemed as one of the most challenging problems in foreign language teaching and learning have adverse impact on their English learning. Therefore, this paper aims to have an in-depth research on the factors causing students’ speaking anxiety. Furthermore, the author hopes to seek for appropriate methods to relieve students’ speaking anxiety to some degree so that their expression ability of oral English and communicative competence can be improved eventually, the implication of this paper will be discussed as well.