Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: Anxiety has recently become the focus of study in foreign language teaching. As one of emotional factors, anxiety has an important influence on language learning. This thesis aims to analyze the causes of anxiety, include self-esteem, sense of competition, cross-cultural shock and negative influences on college students’ oral English. Meanwhile, several solutions are given, hoping for providing helps with learners.

Key words: Anxiety; Oral English; Influences

摘要：焦虑——近年来已成为外语教学研究的热点，作为英语学习者情感因素的一个重要变量，它对语言学习具有深远意义。本文分析了口语焦虑的成因：个人自尊心、竞争意识、文化休克三要素及焦虑对大学生口语表达的消极影响，希望能够为英语学习者提高口语表达能力提供一些帮助。

关键词：焦虑；口语表达；影响

1. Introduction
In the 1970s, the stress in language teaching began to shift from studying how to teach to studying how to learn. Some researchers turned their attention to the affect of learners. And the study of affect has become increasingly popular since the 1980s and 1990s. Gradually more and more people come to realize that the affective component contributes more to language learning than cognitive skills. Investigation into the "effect of affect" has aroused people's great attention. Studies show that affective variables, including anxiety, attitudes, and motivation affect language achievement significantly in language learning. Among various affective factors, language anxiety has also been concerned by many researchers because it has great influence on language performance. And it has been found out that because of anxiety they are much less willing to take part in the communication and they often try to avoid it. So it is an urgent task for researchers to attach more importance to the research of language anxiety so that they can help language learners to reduce their anxiety and improve their language competence effectively.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Definitions of anxiety
 Language anxiety may be seen as a distinctive form of anxiety in response to language learning. It belongs to situation specific anxiety to the fact when learners use their target language to listen, speak, read and write, and when they feel that their limited language level cannot accurately and effectively express what they mean, they feel nervous and scared. Thus, language anxiety is described as “a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings and behaviors related to using a foreign second language for communication”.