3。2 Research instruments

Three instruments were used in the research, namely, observation in class, questionnaire and interview after class。 These three instruments were all based on designated lesson, Unit 9, My favorite subject is science。 in Grade1, Book 1。 This is a listening and speaking class。 After the class, students will master the vocabularies about subjects, and be able to use the sentence pattern “What is your favorite subject?  My favorite subject is … Why do you like…? Because it is…” There are about five oral activities in the lesson。 Activity one and two are inpidual work。 In activity one, teacher ask students “ What color/sport/fruit/number do you like best?” , students are asked by the teacher randomly and are expected to answer the question inpidually。 In activity two, students need to answer the questions of 1a and 1b on the textbook one by one。 The third activity is pair work, acting out the conversation in the textbook。 In the activity four, students are supposed to work in group and cooperate to finish a table。来*自~优|尔^论:文+网www.youerw.com +QQ752018766*

The first instrument in this research is observation in class。 Undoubtedly, it is of great difficult to observe, due to the obscure physical reaction。 Students who have speak-in-class anxiety may experience the heart palpitation, sweating and trembling, which are not obvious。 What can be observed is the participation in the activities。 What’s more, to some extent, we can judge a student whether he is with speak-in-class anxiety by eye contact with teacher。 If a student has high level of self-confidence in class, he will look at the eyes of the teacher confidently。

The second instrument is questionnaire。 The questionnaire in this study was mainly based on Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), which is developed by Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope in 1986。 They were the first to carry out a detailed examination of the dynamics of foreign language anxiety。 However, some items in this questionnaire are changed according to the need。 The questionnaire is to reveal whether there exists speak-in-class anxiety in students, including 16 items。 The first item is about gender。 In the rest 15 items, participants are supposed to choose one option from five: strongly disagree, disagree, either disagree or agree, agree and strongly agree。 The point of the option, strongly disagree, is “-2”, disagree “-1”, either disagree or agree “0”, agree “1”, and strongly agree “2”。 The range of the total points is from “-30” to “30”。 The higher point of the result shows the more serious speak-in-class anxiety。 Taking junior middle students’ English level into consideration, the questionnaire was given in Chinese, leaner s’ native language, which can avoid the misunderstandings and comprehension difficulties caused by English。 Students need to respond to two questionnaires。 Questionnaire 1 and questionnaire 2 are the same, except the order of the items, in order to get more scientific and precise data。 The time for finishing the two questionnaires was 15 minutes。