Foreign Language Anxiety And Stress Coping

The dissertation is one of the achievements for State-Sponsored Scholarship Program for'985Project'. Foreign language anxiety rooted in clinical psychology research is the concept formed on the base of psychological symptoms of foreign language learners. But for a long time, the study of foreign language anxiety revealed an imbalance phenomenon of being lush in linguistics field and weak in the field of psychology. The study results were more used in the learning and teaching links of foreign language learning activities, and it is rarely able to provide services for foreign language learners constructing effective psychological adjustment mechanism.This study, starting from a psychological perspective, focusing on foreign language anxiety and stress coping, selecting Chinese youth learning Japanese and Japanese youth learning Chinese as control group, discusses the relationship among foreign language anxiety, foreign language learning motivation, unwillingness to communicate and stress coping in the process of foreign language learning. Research is divided into three steps. For the first step, the questionnaire applied in the context of this study is prepared and tested, including study1and study2. For the second step, questionnaire survey method is used to understand characteristics of youth foreign language anxiety in China and Japan, as well as to discuss the relationship between foreign language anxiety and the related psychological variables, including study3, study4and study5. For the third step, qualitative study is used to understand deep and detail information on foreign language anxiety, foreign language learning stress, and coping strategies.The results show that:Japanese youth's Chinese anxiety level was significantly higher than the Chinese youth's Japanese anxiety. Gender difference in performance of Chinese youth's Japanese anxiety was mainly showed as anxiety about the form of Japanese courses and self-attitude, female's anxiety level was significantly higher than male's anxiety level; Gender difference in performance of Japanese youth's Chinese anxiety was mainly showed as anxiety for the Chinese classroom situation, male's anxiety level was significantly higher than female's anxiety level. There are certain difference on the coping style of foreign language stress between Chinese youth and Japanese youth. There is gender difference on the coping style for Chinese youth, whereas for Japanese youth, there is no gender difference. There is certain difference on the coping style of foreign language stress between Chinese youth and Japanese youth. For Chinese youth, there is gender difference on the coping style, whereas for Japanese youth, there is no gender difference. The time length of having been learning foreign language has no significant impact on Japanese anxiety and stress coping style of Chinese youth, but it has significant impact on Chinese anxiety and stress coping style of Japanese youth, which indicates that the psychological stability of the Chinese youth to learn Japanese is stronger, while the psychological stability of the Japanese youth to learn Chinese is weaker. Unwillingness to communicate and foreign language anxiety interact with each other. Foreign language learnring motivation and Unwillingness to communicate have a certain role to predict foreign language anxiety. The interacting relationship of foreign language anxiety and stress coping does not exist in Chinese youth, but exists in Japanese youth. Unwillingness to communicate and foreign language anxiety can predict the stress coping, but this predicting role was only showed by Japanese youth, for Chinese youth, Stress coping can be predicted only by unwillingness to communicate.The value of research lies in puting forward applicable psychological adjustment strategy for the foreign language learners of China and Japan respectively, and provides an important empirical basis for clinical counseling work in the construction of the effective self-regulation modelof foreign language anxiety.