Yiyang Jiang
The 2022 Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standards highlight oral proficiency as central to junior high English teaching, making listening and speaking competence key parts of students' overall language assessment. Yet current instruction still prioritizes reading and writing, and many students experience oral anxiety that hinders their speaking development. This paper reviews existing research to identify major causes of oral English anxiety among junior high school students and clarify how anxiety interacts with speaking performance, providing both theoretical foundations and practical strategies for alleviating anxiety and improving oral teaching. Key findings: (1) junior high school students have relatively high levels of oral English anxiety; (2) Teachers can employ multimodal teaching and cooperative learning to reduce students' speaking anxiety; (3) students should recognize moderate anxiety as normal, learn to manage excessive anxiety, and apply cognitive restructuring. By integrating anxiety theory, self-efficacy, and the Affective Filter Hypothesis into oral English teaching practice, this study supports future research and helps teachers foster supportive classrooms, reduce student pressure, and enhance oral instruction effectiveness.