An Analysis Of Anxiety Elements In The English Study Of Tibetan Bilingual Students

With regard to foreign language anxiety research in Chinese SLA, much attention has been paid to Chinese (Han) students or monolingual Chinese. In Hezuo Minorities Advanced Teachers College (Hezuo Teachers College), Tibetan bilingual students who major in English are different from other students in the following aspects: First, to Tibetan bilingual students, their English education is a third language (L3) learning, or an English education in the background of "Bilingual education." Second, as far as their Chinese proficiency is concerned, all the Tibetan major students are not the same: some of them Tibetan-dominated Bilingual students (TDBSs); others are Chinese-dominated bilingual students (CDBSs). Third, the native language of all the English teachers is Chinese. They can't speak Tibetan and their knowledge about Tibetan culture is very limited. So the teachers who teach Tibetan major students use Chinese as the medium of instruction in their English classes.Based on Tibetan bilingual students who major in English Hezuo Teachers College, the present research explores the characteristics of their language anxiety elements and to what extent Chinese as a medium of instruction facilitates or debilitates these elements.The study encourages English teachers who teach minority bilingual students to know more about foreign language learning anxiety particularly when students' acquired languages are different in proficiency. Also, it's a study about language learning anxiety engendered to the bilinguals when the medium of instruction may play special roles in the study process. So it helps teachers have a clear knowledge on how to use medium of instruction effectively and how to help those learners when their proficiency about the teaching language is poor.There are six parts in this dissertation. Part One introduces the purpose and significance of the paper; meanwhile some terminologies concerning FLA, language acquisition and bilingualism are clarified. In Part Two, a brief literature review about FLA is conducted. Research into third language acquisition abroad is also presented. In Part Three, the author introduces theories involving the present research, especially Krashen's Monitor Theory and his Comprehension Hypothesis, Howitz' conceptualization of FLA and her research approaches. The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale, which was developed by Howitz and her colleagues, is conducted a deliberate introduction. In part four, the author advances the purpose of the paper, then provides information about subjects and some instruments as well as the procedures of study. Chapter Five is about data analysis and explanation. In this section, there are five categories in the statistical description: (a) the statistic description of FLA of both types of bilinguals, (b) a brief comparison of FLA characteristics between two groups of bilinguals, (c) the statistic description of the anxiety of medium of instruction and correlation between FLA and anxiety of the medium of instruction of TDBs (d) the data from the questionnaire of English teachers and (e) the explanations to FLA characteristics of TEMSs.At the beginning, to understand the general descriptive tendency of the data collected, descriptive analyses are conducted to the data from the FLCAS and "the anxiety in the medium of instruction". One-way ANOVA and Tukey test are processed to show that the mean difference is significant either between different groups of subjects or different genders in the same group. Then, correlation analysis is conducted to understand the relationship between the FLA and "the anxiety in the medium of instruction" in subjects with different language modes.The data analysis suggests that: (1) AH subjects show a high degree of FLA; (2) In all subjects, males show a higher degree of FLA than the female subjects. In both group, malesubjects' mean of score in the FLCAS is 6-7 higher than the female subjects. The mean difference is significant at the .05 level; (3) In TDB group, male subjects suffer more anxiety fronrCA and fear of negative evaluation than their female counterparts; (4) In CDB group, male subjects suffer more anxiety from fear of negative evaluation, and female subjects have a more severe CA . The above attributes are given explanation from the perspective of age, religion and culture, family background, language mode and teaching activity.In Chapter Six, the author discusses the positive points concerning language acquisition of Tibetan bilingual students, and then the suggestions about facilitating students' FLA are rendered. At last, the author confesses there are some disadvantages in the dissertation and points out what need to be conducted further to perfect the research.