College Students' English Learning Anxiety And Their Coping Styles

Anxiety is often regarded as kind of aberrant emotions, which is also termed as mental abnormality (Wang & Wan 2001). Anxiety is the "tense anticipation of a threatening but vague event; a feeling of uneasy suspense. It is a negative affect so closely related to fear that in many circumstances the two terms are used interchangeably" (Rachman 1998: 2). Of course, anxiety is not equal to fear. Although fear is also a combination of tension and unpleasant anticipation, fear is an emotional reaction to a specific perceived danger ?to a threat that is identifiable.Since the 1980s, second (foreign) language acquisition has gradually aroused people's interests and great progress has been witnessed in this field. Much research has similar opinions on the relationship between affective variables and foreign language learning (Stern 1983; Gardner 1985; Steinberg & Horwitz 1986; Young 1992). Anxiety is regarded as one of the most crucial affective variables, and language anxiety a kind of complicated mental phenomenon specific to language learning. However, little research has directed toward foreign language learning anxiety. Horwitz et al. (1986) attributed this inconclusive result of previous research to the lack of a reliable and valid measure of anxiety specific to language learning. They conceptualize foreign language anxiety as "a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings and behaviors related to classroomlanguage learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process" (1986: 128).Thanks to the cooperation with their college students enrolled in foreign language courses, Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope (1986) developed the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale in order to cater for this specific need to measure foreign language anxiety. Ever since its first appearance, the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), which consists of three related components, i.e., communication apprehension, test anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation, has caught attention of many scholars and researchers. It has been examined from different angles, such as its reliability and validity, its theoretical construct, and so on (Horwitz 1986; Aida 1994; Ganschow & Spark 1996). It is a great pity that such a widely influential scale in the Western countries has not received adequate attentions in China. Nevertheless, China is a nation which has the world's most foreign language learners. Therefore, discussions on how to cope with learner's foreign language learning anxiety possess both theoretical significance and pragmatic value.The present study utilizes FLCAS's theoretical model as a research framework to explore the anxieties experienced by Chinese English non-majors. Based on the presupposition that language anxiety exerts impacts on foreign language learning, this dissertation, especially the experiment, is aiming at solving the following problems: (1) Do college students experience anxiety in their learning of English? (2) Are there any differences between different sexes? (3) Are there any differences between different majors? (4) Do students of different education levels experience different anxiety?Although many scholars, researchers and ordinary teachers and students have empirically thought that there must be differences among the different dimensions of the scale, between different sexes, different majors and different education levels. This study examined all the above aspects by comparing the means and the standard deviations of the subjects. There has been no significant difference in every dimension of the scale (t=. 370, p>.005).I think that the research on college students' English learning anxiety has laid a foundation for the study in Chapter Five, i.e., the foreign language learning anxiety coping styles study. As a matter of fact, coping is not new to us. Many researchers have devoted a lot to the study of it. In the 1960s, coping was regarded as a process of adaptation; in the1970s, a kind of behavior; and in the 1980s, an integration of cognitive activity a...