An Empirical Research Into The Effects Of Learning Motivation And Anxiety On Oral Output

As the key intrinsic factors determining the enhancement of students' learning ability, learning motivation and anxiety have gradually aroused the concern of Second Language Acquisition researchers at home and abroad. However, it is so far regrettable that the little work has been done on the effects of learning motivation and anxiety on oral English learning. The present study intends to investigate the effects of learning motivation and anxiety on oral English output, aiming to enhancethe effectiveness of oral English learning and teaching.In the light of Swain's Output Hypothesis and Levelt's Oral Production Model, the researcher conducted an empirical research on a total of 30 English major sophomores from the Business English Department of PLA Navy Arms Command Academy in the fall semester, 2007, aiming to investigate the correlations among learning motivation, speaking anxiety and oral output in oral English teaching and learning. The whole experiment consisted of three sectors: a questionnaire, an oral test and a follow-up interview. The questionnaire, composed of two parts, namely English Learning Motivation Scale and English Learning Anxiety Scale, was used to measure learning motivation and anxiety of students learning oral competence. Cool Edi Pro 2.0 was used to measure the oral English quantity and fluency indices of the oral test, and the SPSS version 11.5 for Windows was administered to compute the collected data.The findings of the present study show that both motivation and anxiety have significant correlations with oral output in terms of quantity indices and fluency indices respectively. First, there are statistically significant correlations between English learning motivation and four oral assessment quantity indices (NTT rpb=0.904; NCU rpb= 0.873; MLPC rpb=0.814; NS rpb= 0.876). Second, the results show that there are two positive and two negative correlations (ALP rpb= 0.986; FR rpb= 0.58; MLR rpb=—0.393; SR rpb=—0. 800 ) between anxiety and the four fluency indices. Third, subjects with higher motivation but lower anxiety produced larger quantity and more fluent oral output than subjects with higher motivation and higher anxiety and subjects with lower motivation and higher anxiety as well, while subjects with higher motivation and higher anxiety produced larger quantity of output than subjects with lower motivation but higher anxiety. Computing by the Pearson Bivariat Correlations method, we find that among the four oral quantity indices, the NTT (Number of Turn-taking) is the most significant predictor of English learning motivation, while among the four fluency indices, the ALP (Average Length of Pausing) is the most significant predictor of English learning anxiety.Finally, the paper points out that although it is undeniable that motivation and anxiety are only two aspects of affective factors, and affective factors are not the only elements influence foreign language learning, which is achieved mainly through cognitive process. However, it is safe enough to arrive at a conclusion that foreign language learning can be facilitated through enhancing the motivation appropriately and minimizing the debilitating anxiety accordingly.