A Study On The Relationship Between Perceptual Learning Styles And Language Learning Anxiety

Language researchers in second language acquisition area have paid much attention to individual learner differences for a long time, among which affective factors and learning styles are two important components. Most researches are done on the two topics separately. However, the relationship between them has been documented in many fields. An extensive overview of literature reveals fewer researches on their relationships have been carried out in the field of linguistics. This study tries to investigate middle school students' degree of foreign language anxiety and their perceptual learning style preferences. At the same time, it tries to explore the relationship between the two variables.There are fifty-six middle school students chosen from two different classes in Grade Eight participating in the investigation. In order to investigate the subjects' foreign language anxiety and perceptual learning style preferences, two questionnaires are adopted, including Horwitz's Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale and Reid's Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire. The data collected are put into Excel for calculation first. Then SPSS is used for data analysis. Descriptive analyses are adopted to get an overview of the subjects' language anxiety and a general tendency of the subjects' perceptual learning style preferences. Then Pearson Correlation is used to investigate the possible relationship between the two variables.The data obtained from FLCAS indicates that the level of foreign language anxiety experienced by the subjects in the present study is a little lower than that in Horwitz's study with the mean score 90.34. The descriptive statistics of four related variables of FLCAS reveals that the language anxiety of middle school students in class mainly exists in communication apprehension and fear of negative evaluation, and test anxiety is what the students worry least. According to the data obtained from PLSPQ, among the six categories, tactile style and kinesthetic style are the most preferred. Group style and auditory style are the least preferred. The results also show that middle school students like all these six learning styles in the present study. They have multiple major learning style preferences. The result of correlation analysis reveals a weak correlation between them. Only three variables of perceptual learning styles are found to have correlation coefficient that is significant at.05 level. Group learning style is found to be positively correlated with language anxiety, while auditory and individual styles have negative correlation with language anxiety. Visual learning style is negatively related to language anxiety, while tactile style and kinesthetic style are positively related to language anxiety. However, the correlation coefficient shows no statistical significance.Based on the results of the present study, some suggestions are put forward for both language learners and teachers. On one hand, in order to alleviate language anxiety students should identify and stretch their own learning styles by examining and practicing various learning strategies. It is also important for learners to use the learning styles that will alleviate language anxiety and minimize the use of styles that have a negative influence on their language anxiety. On the other hand, teachers should adopt a multi-method approach to connect different learning styles of different students and help students develop learning strategies associated with their learning styles. The training of general strategies can help students alleviate their language anxiety in class. Besides, teachers should give students encouragement and positive evaluation since the language anxiety of the subjects of this study mainly exists in communication apprehension and fear of negative evaluation.