A Study On Correlation Between English Learning Anxiety And Management Strategy

In the 1960s, Humanism came into being. The late 20th century, witnessed an important shift of focus of foreign language teaching research, that is, from the teacher to the learner. Both foreign language anxiety and language learning strategies have always received considerable attention. What's more, in recent years, in China, with the popularization of higher education, independent college of university appears as a new form and also an indispensable part of higher education in China. So the research on English learning of independent college students is quite few, let alone the correlation between English learning anxiety and management strategy employment.Three questionnaires were employed as the instruments of quantitative research in the present study, in which 204 first-year undergraduate students of Xi'an Technological University North Institute of Information and Engineering participated. One is the background information questionnaire, another is Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) designed by Horwitz et al. 1986, and the third one is the Management Strategies Inventory (MSI) designed by the author and based on the theory of the prominent Professor Wen Qiufang. Descriptive statistics, Regression analysis, Pearson correlation analysis, together with qualitative research in forms of interviewing and self-reporting were used to investigate the correlation between foreign language anxiety and the employment of Management Strategy of independent college students.The major findings are as follows:1) Independent college students experience comparatively higher English learning anxiety. Among the four categories of English learning anxiety:test anxiety can easily provoke anxiety; communication apprehension ranks the second one; then general feeling of anxiety; fear of negative evaluation is the least one.2) Female subjects experience a relatively higher level of anxiety than male subjects, but there is no significant difference between male and female subjects.3) Foreign language anxiety and English proficiency are negatively related.4) Independent college students have developed certain abilities of employing management strategies. In term of their effects, emotion-controlling strategies are employed most frequently; self-evaluating ranks the second one; the following are error-monitoring and aim and planning.5) Students'English learning anxiety has a significant negative correlation with their employment of their management strategies.This research aims to apply the findings to English teaching so as to lower the students'anxiety, improve their study and help them to become independent and effective language learners.