Study On Verbal Competence And Foreign Language Anxiety Influenced By Chinese Cultural Factors

A good deal of research has been devoted to the study of foreign language anxiety in recent years. Yet very few studies have referred to culture as a causal factor in foreign language anxiety. This paper is on the study of verbal competence and foreign language anxiety influenced by Chinese cultural factors.The study was carried out through the combination of the quantitative and qualitative research method which began with the hypotheses based on the influence of Chinese cultural factors on foreign language anxiety. The two hypotheses were: I. Certain cultural factors in China will psychologically influence the Chinese college English major learners and cause language anxiety. 2. The major identified factors of affective variables will be negatively correlated with learner's verbal competence. A total of 122 English major sophomores from NWPU, as the subjects of the research participated in the study from Sep. 2003 to Nov. 2004.In the quantitative research, the data were collected through a questionnaire which included a form about the demographic information of subjects and the Culture Related Foreign Language Anxiety Scale (CRFLAS). The author adopted the SPSS 11.5 to analyze the collected data and 9 factors were extracted through the process. The nine extracted factors were closely related to the anxiety level of foreign language learners, which confirms the first hypothesis. A further research was carried out by the author, adopting the method of Pearson's product moment correlation, to find out the correlation between the foreign language anxiety influenced by Chinese cultural factors and the verbal competence of foreign language learners. The result of data analysis showed that the subjects' foreign language anxiety level negatively correlated with their oral English proficiency, which confirmed the second hypothesis.In the qualitative research, the author selected 14 students (whose student No. ends with 8) out of 122 subjects. They were asked to keep diary on the experience and reflection on their English class from April. 10 to Nov. 10 in 2004 (18 weeks excluding the summer holiday of the year). Based on students' ratings on theCRFLAS, the author selected 7 students from the high, moderate, low anxiety group respectively (21 subjects in a total). With a combined analysis on subjects diary and the interview, the author found that the subjects tended to explain their silence in English class with reasons including dissatisfaction about the teaching methodology, teachers' preference on individual student, fear of losing "face", being humble and modest to protect the group harmony, stress caused by parents' expectation. The results of the qualitative research consist with the quantitative study, which explicitly indicates that foreign language anxiety influenced by Chinese cultural factors negatively correlated with the verbal competence of foreign language learners.The author suggests that foreign language teachers put enough attention to students' affective demands, adopt heuristic teaching method and avoid using authoritarian language or gesture; avoid causing fierce competition in class; communicate with students regularly and discuss teaching methodology among peers. The author suggests that students take initiative to overcome foreign language anxiety from their own aspect and throw away the false concepts such as fear of losing face, fear of being considered "liking to show off"; transform the idea of competition to the spirit of cooperation; communicate with teachers and parents in their own initiative to reduce the stress caused by the authoritarian figures in Chinese culture.