A Study On The Correlation Between High Vocational Students’Anxiety Over Oral Tourism English And Their Oral Achievement

As an important affective variable affecting language learning, researches onEnglish learning anxiety have become increasingly popular in recent years. There is nouniform research result yet, but one point has basically got universal approval, that is, thespeaking performance is the most closely related to the anxiety among the four languageskills as listening, speaking, reading and writing. As ESP, tourism English makes a highdemand for the oral communication. Based on their own condition, high vocationalstudents majoring in Tourism have a low entrance score and a poor cultural foundation.They are commonly characterized as with a low learning interest, an obscure learningtarget, a shortage of self-confidence, etc. What’s worse, they can hardly get interested inoral tourism English learning, still less with the learning results. Therefore, it is urgent toresearch on anxiety over English of this special group that has been neglected by theresearcher to provide necessary theoretical help for most language teachers engaged inhigh vocational tourism English teaching.Based on a summary of relevant literature about anxiety over foreign language, thisthesis not only measures the general level of high vocational students’ anxiety over oraltourism English, but also makes a scientific discussion on the relations between anxietyover oral tourism English and their oral English achievement by locating 164 highvocational students in Linfen Vocational and Technical College as the subjects of theresearch, taking Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) and oral tests as research instruments, and applying modern statistical method. On this basis, together withobservation, interview and other qualitative research methods, the researcher tries toexplore the main reasons causing high vocational students’anxiety when they try to makethe oral expression in English. The results are as follows:First, the total level of High vocational students’anxiety over oral tourism Englishis at moderate level.Second, the oral tourism English achievement presents significant negativecorrelation with communication apprehension，test anxiety, common anxiety and the totalscore of anxiety. The oral tourism English achievement presents negative correlation withfear of negative evaluation, but not to a significant level.Third, it can be found from the regression analysis of anxiety over oral tourismEnglish and oral achievement that communication apprehension, fear of negativeevaluation, test anxiety, common anxiety are good predictors of oral achievement.Forth, classroom activities and classroom teaching method, linguistic ability,character elements as well as evaluation may be important factors causing anxiety overoral English performance.Based on the findings and discussion, this thesis put forward some suggestions forHigh Vocational Tourism English teachers. They are suggested to adopt some teachingmethods and different teaching evaluation method to alleviate anxiety over oral tourismEnglish; improve classroom activities training and enhance students’language ability;establish friendly relations between teacher and students. Finally, the limitations of thisresearch are pointed out and further research plan is suggested.