Anxiety And Language Learning

Anxiety is part of normal human experience, often described as a feeling of tension associated with a sense of threat of danger when the source of the danger is not known. Second language anxiety is described here as a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to using a foreign/second language for communication beyond the language classroom.The reasons that cause anxiety are very complex. Different teaching methods lead to different anxiety degrees. Scholars abroad have made many studies. Ellis (1985) divides anxiety into state or situational specific anxiety and trait anxiety according to its functions. Horwitz and Cope (1986) divide classroom anxiety into communication apprehension, general anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation.In the year 1960, Albert and Haber (1960) distinguish facilitating anxiety and debilitating anxiety. Some people hold that facilitating anxiety is helpful to enhance learning effect; however, many researchers and teachers state that anxiety is an affective filter factor, which hinders the enhancement of language capacity. Therefore, the negative effect is much larger than the positive. In this case, foreign language teachers are faced with the challenge in the classroom context as to how to prevent the anxiety-inducing situation and minimize the debilitating anxiety among the students.Most of the studies are based on second language learning, that is, learning in the second language environment. This thesis makes a review of the relevant literature, including correlates of language anxiety ranging from highly personal to procedural, such as: self-esteem, tolerance of ambiguity, risk-taking, competitiveness, social anxiety, test anxiety, identity and culture shock, beliefs, classroom activities and methods, introductor-leaner interactions.Based on these theories, this thesis sets out to carry out a research study on the students of English department in Dezhou College. Following the trend of expansion in enrollment, colleges like Dezhou College in China are prevalent. It is hoped that this study will contribute to the understanding of English majors' state of anxiety insuch colleges. We have four grades, each grade including two or three classes. One class from each grade is chosen as a sample, and altogether we got four classes from four grades. The total number of students is 164, among whom there are 132 female students and 32 male students. These students as samples may represent the whole four-year students of English department.The primary goal of this research is to identify those factors, as perceived by students, which may contribute to anxiety, and those factors that may reduce anxiety in an attempt to understand more fully the role that anxiety may play in learning a foreign or second language.The research instrument is the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) developed by Horwitz and Cope (1986). The FLCAS is a 33-item, self-report measure, scored on a five-point Likert Scale, ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree, and is developed to capture the specific essence of foreign language anxiety in a classroom setting and to provide investigators with a standard measure.The participants complete Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale, and the FLCAS is translated into Chinese. After that I get the original data, and then input the data into the SPSS software for statistical analysis.Totally, according to the 33 questions, all the students show certain level of anxiety to oral English. No gender difference in levels of anxiety has been found. And also no difference is found in the anxiety levels of different grades. As far as communication comprehension anxiety is concerned, there is no statistically significant difference either. The statistically significant differences exist in the 2 factors: fear of negative evaluation and general feeling of anxiety. Students of grade 1 and grade 4 exhibit statistically significant difference in terms of fear of negative evaluation and general feeling of anxiety. Students of grade 1 an...