A Study Of Correlations Between Non-English Majors' Cognitive Styles And Their English Language Classroom Anxiety

Since the 1970s, the focus of EFL, together with the arousal of humanism which is known as a significant modern psychological approach, has shifted from the way the teacher teaches to the way the learner learns. Many educators have been devoting to the study on different variables which affect the learners' learning. Among them, foreign language anxiety, one of the affective variables, has been given more and more attention.Therefore, lots of researches on FLA have sprung up since then. Many researchers have already madeinvestigations into factors that arouse anxiety from various perspectives, such as personality, negative evaluation, test, classroom atmosphere, the teacher's manners, the learner's motivation and attitude, sex, family background and so on. However, it appears that, fewer investigations have been made on FLA from the perspective of the learner's cognitive styles. It is what the present study focuses on. The learner's cognitive styles can not be neglected in the study of FLA, hence it is expected that this paper can be of some help for FL teachers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate ELCA among non-English majors and their cognitive styles, so as to find how and to what extent the learner's cognitive styles influence foreign language anxiety. The present study aims to find the possible correlations between the learner's cognitive styles and FLA, hence shed new light on the study of FLA and its implications. The investigation of the study was conducted through instruments such as questionnaires, and interviews. The study aims to find correlations between learners' English language classroom anxiety and their cognitive styles on four aspects, such as, hemisphere specialization, aural/visual preference, tolerance of ambiguity, and extroversion/introversion. The results of the questionnaires are put into SPSS14.0 to be processed and analyzed. As a result, there is neither correlation between anxiety and left/right hemisphere specialization nor correlation between anxiety and aural or visual preference. But some data got from the analysis still indicates that the study has some implications to SL teaching. Thus the research in these fields needs future investigations and study. It is found that there is a negative correlation between anxiety and tolerance of ambiguity and a correlation between anxiety and extroversion or introversion. The present study gives some implications to the study of ELCA.The thesis consists of five parts. The first part introduces the definitions and classifications of language anxiety, different measurements of foreign language anxiety, as well as the significance of the study. The second part is the literature review, including theory foundations, language anxiety researches abroad and in China. In the third part, the definitions of cognitive style and some of the cognitive styles are discussed from the following perspectives: hemisphere specialization, aural/visual preference, tolerance of ambiguity, and extroversion/introversion. The fourth part is about the present study, including the introduction of the subjects, instruments, research methods, and the interpretation of the findings. Some conclusions and suggestions as well as implications and limitations are given in the fifth part.