A Study On The Relation Among English Learning Anxiety, Metacognitive Strategies And English Achievement Of Local Independent College Students

Foreign language anxiety is one of the most important issues to explore foreign languagelearning, which has negative effects on foreign language achievement in most cases. Mostprevious studies on reducing foreign language anxiety focus on the field of learner’s affectivefactors, such as from the perspective of its relationship with motivation, attitudes, andself-esteem, but the results are not so desirable. As the most advanced and more crucialcomponent of learning strategies, metacognitive strategies are significant for the successfullanguage learning, which greatly have drawn the attention of researchers in the fields ofeducation and psychology. Chinese researchers bagan to make the empirical study of thecorrelation between foreign language anxiety and metacognitive strategies decades of yearsago, but little studies dealt with the relation among foreign language anxiety, metacognitivestrategies and English achievement. Most researches often concentrate on state-ownedstudents, while less involve in Independent College students. As Independent College havebecome an important component of Chinese higher education, it deserves the attention of itsstudents’ English learning.Based on the theories of English learning anxiety and metacognitive strategies, thisthesis intends to explore efficient ways for improving Independent College students’ Englishproficiency by studying the relation among foreign language anxiety, metacognitive strategyuse and English achievement through200non-English majors randomly selected fromApplied Science College of Jiangxi University of Science and Technology, trying to examinethe following four questions:(1) What is the status quo of English learning anxiety?(2) Whatmetacognitive strategies are used?(3) What’s the relation among anxiety, metacognitivestrategies and achievement?(4) Are there any differences in English anxiety andmetacognitive strategies between male and female students, arts and science students,successful and unsuccessful CET-4passed students? With the help of descriptive statistics,correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis and T-test analysis, etc, the aim of the studyis to provide further objective support for English anxiety and metacognitive strategiesresearch, as well as implications for Independent College students and teachers. Theconclusion indicates that metacogntive strategies are the efficient way to reduce foreign language anxiety, emphasizing the great significance of metacognitive strategy training.The whole thesis consists of6chapters.Chapter One introduces the background and significance of the present study. Thehypothesis is proposed as: there is a significant negative correlation between foreign languageanxiety and metacognitive strategies. In other words, metacognitive strategies play a positiverole in reducing anxiety. Chapter Two reviews the literature of both foreign language anxietyand metacognitive strategies. It includes: definitions and classification of foreign languageanxiety, and its negative effects on language learning; definitions and classification oflanguage learning strategies; definitions and classification of metacognitive strategies, and itspositive effects on language learning. Chapter Three includes research methodology. ChapterFour involves data analysis. Chapter Five is the result discussion which explains the positiveeffects of metacognitive strategies on reducing anxiety. Chapter Six is the conclusion,pedagogical implications and the limitations of the present study, and suggestions for futureresearch are also brought forward in this part.