A Contrast Study On Chinese Learning Anxieties Of American And Japanese Students

Foreign language learning anxiety, as one of the most important emotional factors upon learners, is extensively focused by some researchers recently. This study, based on the domestic and foreign leading theories and conclusions on foreign language anxiety, makes an in-depth contrast of language anxieties and individual factors between American and Japanese students studying Chinese in China.Depending on Questionnaire, individual interviews, etc. the study makes scientific qualitative and quantitative analysis with the SPSS-statistical package for the social science. It analyses Chinese learning anxieties of American and Japanese students in a point of contrastive view and mainly contains the overall anxiety situation, the distribution characteristic and the degree of their anxieties. Moreover, some individual factors which may influence their Chinese learning anxieties are also included.The study shows, as a whole, there is a significant difference between American and Japanese students in Chinese learning anxieties, and the anxiety degree of American students is lower than the other. The differences of distribution characteristic of anxiety between them include: 1) On physiological reaction of anxiety, the experience of heartbeat speedup is more common among the Japanese students than American students.2) American students shows stronger confidence than the other when learning Chinese.3) The performance in Chinese class caused by the confidence also shows difference between the two.4) On the skills of Chinese language learning, Japanese students worry Chinese speaking and listening most, while American students show the most of their anxieties on reading and writing. 5) Though Japanese students are more affected by the anxiety from the preparation for class or the teacher's questions, American students are mush easier affected by the preparation itself.6) For the test anxiety, the result reveals significant difference between the two, and Japanese students get more anxious than the other, though both of them got very low scores on it. 7) They have different feeling within Chinese society and the Japanese get much anxious when surrounded by many Chinese people. 8) On the attitude for Chinese class, compared with the Japanese, American students show more interest on Chinese lessons and are willing to take more.On the individual factors of Chinese learners, we also find some results as the followings: 1) Japanese female get more anxious than the male when studying Chinese, while the gender factor has no influence upon the Americans.2) The self-evaluation has no effect on the anxiety of the two, but generally American students give higher self-evaluation than Japanese students.3) Those American students who have the experience of learning foreign language before show lower anxiety than those who have not. Meanwhile, all the students from Japan have the experience with no exception.4) The Chinese learning anxiety of American students are not affected by the personal character, while it influents the Japanese a lot.5) There is no significant relationship between the learners' age, the time of learning and the anxiety respectively. We also make reasonable explanations for those results from the view of some related theories, e. g. Cognitive Psychology, Sociology, culture and nation studies.At the end of the thesis, based on the conclusions of this study, it offers some effective strategies for language learning anxiety, which may be helpful for the Chinese teachers in the teaching practice.