Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Foreign language learning is a rather complex process that involves many factors.Among them, affective factors of learners have great influence on language learning.Anxiety, as one of affective factors, prevails in language learning.Affective factors are the engine of learning. Without them, learning would not gainany improvement. Anxiety is one of the most important factors that affect second languagelearning. Scholars both from home and abroad have done many researches on anxiety. Inthe 1940s, educational psychology began to study anxiety. Up to 1950s, the theory aboutthe relationship between anxiety and performance in foreign language learning came intobeing and many positive researches about it have been done. However, there is no specificconclusion on anxiety's role in foreign language learning.Horwitz and Young (1991) published Foreign Language Anxiety: From Theory andResearch to Classroom Implication in 1991. It marks the relative maturity of anxiety study.In order to measure degree of foreign language classroom anxiety, they designed theForeign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS). It is composed of thirty-threequestions about the interaction between teachers and students in classroom languagelearning. They have found that the description given by the students with higher anxiety isworse than that by the students with less anxiety when they are requested to describe apicture. It is concluded that language anxiety has a negative correlation with oral tests.Phillips (1992) has done a study to measure language anxiety by employing Horwitz'sFLCAS. He has found that foreign language classroom anxiety has a negative correlationwith oral test . Vogely (1998) has found that students' language anxietyhas a negative correlation with listening performances. Cheng and others (1999) havefound that students' language anxiety has a negative correlation with writing performances.
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1.2 Purposes of the Research
Since there is no consensus on the role of anxiety in foreign language learning and onthe difference in the degree of anxiety between male students and female students, thisstudy is to explore the role of anxiety in foreign language learning of students in higher vocational college and the difference in the degree of anxiety between male students andfemale students and find out the situation in which students get anxious about their Englishstudy and the current situation of students' English study.The research questions are as follows:
(1)Is there language anxiety in English classroom? If yes，what's the degree offoreign language anxiety?
(2)Is there any difference in degree of anxiety between male students and femalestudents?
(3)What is the teaching situation that makes language learners anxious?
(4)How is the English study of students in higher vocational college?
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Anxiety
Anxiety, seen as a psychological concept, is a complicated phenomenon. Anxiety wasdefined by Spielberger (1972) as “an unpleasant emotional condition or state which ischaracterized by subjective feelings of apprehension, tension, and worry, and by arousal oractivation of the autonomic nervous system.，’ Leary (1983) stated that "Anxiety refers to acognitive-affective syndrome of which physiological arousal (indicative of sympatheticnervous system activation) and apprehension regarding a possible negative consequencethat the inpidual views as imminent is characteristic." Hansen (1977) defined anxiety as“general uneasiness, a sense of foreboding, a feeling of tension." Brown (1994) also agreedthat anxiety was associated with feelings of uneasiness, frustration, self-doubt,apprehension and worry.The study of anxiety focuses on testing anxiety in the field of education. Dusek (1980)defined test anxiety as “a disagreeable feeling or emotional state that has physiological andbehavioral concomitants, and that is felt in formal testing or other evaluative situations."Zeidner (1998) gave a more detailed delineation of test anxiety. Test anxiety was definedas a set of physiological, phenomenological, and behavioral responses that accompaniedconcern about failure in an exam or possible negative consequences or similar evaluativesituation. Negative effect test anxiety has on academic performance has been found.Hembree (1988) discovered that test anxiety led to poor performance in the meta-analysisof the relationship between test anxiety and achievement. Standardized tests with thepurpose of evaluating students' ability, with strange test format, with time limits, led topressure on students. (Hill & Wigfield, 1984; Wigfield & Eccles, 1989) Wigfield & Eccles(1989) stated that classrooms with too high standards for assessment were associated withhigher levels of anxiety.
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2.2 Foreign Language Anxiety
In our country, millions of people are learning English or other foreign languagesevery day. During the process of learning, they may encounter different kinds ofdifficulties. They feel frustrated and discouraged. A number of students begin to dislikelearning the foreign language or, worse still, some students hate or even fear attendingforeign language classes. Such phenomenon can be considered as foreign language anxiety.Foreign language anxiety prevails in foreign language learning. Then what is foreignlanguage anxiety? Foreign language anxiety is different from anxiety dealt with inpsychology. American psychologist Horwitz is the pioneer to consider language anxiety asa special kind of anxiety during language learning and have attempted to define it. Anxietyis “a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings and behaviors related toclassroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learningprocess?” (Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope，1986: 125) Language anxiety is probably theaffective factor affecting or hindering language learner's learning process. Languageanxiety was fear or apprehension arising when a language learner intended to perform in asecond or foreign language in which the language learner was not proficient, of whichderogatory self-related cognitions was characteristic. (Gardner and Maclntyre, 1994)Foreign language anxiety has effect on language learner's performance. There are fivekinds of performances showing foreign language anxiety. They are mind blankness,repetition, slips of tongue, stammer and self-correction.
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Chapter Three Methodology...........13
3.1Research Questions...........13
3.2Subjects...........13
3.3Instruments...........14
3.3.1Questionnaire...........14
3.3.2Interview...........15
3.4Data Collection and Analysis...........15
3.5 Summary16Chapter Four Results and Discussion...........17
4.1Degree of Anxiety of English Learners in Higher Vocational College...........17
4.2Degree of Anxiety of Male Students and Female Students...........21
4.3the Current Situation of Students' EnglishStudy...........24
4.4Summary27Chapter Five Conclusion...........28
5.1Major Findings.........28
5.2Strategies for Improving Students' English...........29
5.3Limitations...........32
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
This chapter covers the results and discussion of the present study. The researcher willillustrate degree of anxiety of language learners in higher vocational college and thedifference in degree of anxiety of male students and female students through descriptivestatistics. The sources of foreign language anxiety and the current situation of students'English study are described.
4.1 Degree of Anxiety of English Learners in Higher Vocational College
The Cronbachs alpha of this study is 0.988. It shows that this stud> has high reliability.The Cronbachs alpha is compared with that of previous study. The Cronbachs alphas areclose to each other. The fact shows that FLCAS formed by Horwitz has high relativityamong thirteen-three items.between 99 and 132, the degree of anxiety is medium, therefore the subjects in Cui's studyalso have anxiety in English learning and the degree of anxiety is moderate. Most of thesubjects in Cui's study are from Sichuan Province. This implies that degree of anxiety inEnglish learning varies with the regions. If a language learner's score is more than 132, thedegree of anxiety is high. Both the average score in this study and that in Cui's study is lessthan 132. As a result，a conclusion can be drawn that students from higher vocationalcollege do not suffer from high degree of anxiety in English learning. The underlyingreason for this is that they do not need to attend College English Test Band 4. As a result,they are under little pressure during the process of English learning. Apart from the abovereason, that those students do not set themselves a high academic goal and their parentshave low expectations of them explain why they suffer from a low degree of anxiety inEnglish learning.
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Conclusion
The findings of the study are to be summarized in this chapter. Pedagogicalimplications of the study will also be discussed. The limitations of the present study will bepresented in the last part of the chapter.In accordance with the sequence of the research questions raised beforehand, themajor findings of this thesis can be summarized as follows;Firstly, degree of anxiety in English learning varies with the regions. The majority ofstudents of non-English majors in Shandong Career Development College have foreignlanguage anxiety. 205 students (78.8%) have a low level of foreign language anxiety.Another 34 students (13.1%) have a medium level of foreign language anxiety.Secondly, only under such circumstances as not understanding what the Englishteacher is correcting, attending English classes, and learning so many rules, femalestudents get more anxious than male students. Totally, there is no big difference in degreeof foreign language anxiety between female students and male students. The languageanxiety has nothing to do with gender.Thirdly, as far as students of non-English majors from Shandong Career DevelopmentCollege are concerned, foreign language anxiety is mainly generated from listening andspeaking. Speaking in front of class, failure to understand what the English teacher issaying and question answering are the main causes of foreign language anxiety in theclassroom. The majority of students of non-English majors in Shandong CareerDevelopment College do not suffer from fear of negative evaluation and test anxiety.
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References (omitted)