An Empirical Study On English Listening Anxiety And Affective Coping Strategies Of Higher Vocational College Students

Anxiety is often regarded as a kind of abnormal emotion, or mental deviation. It is defined as a tense anticipation of a vague threatening or uneasy suspense. Anxiety has long been a practical concern in the fields of psychology, medicine, as well as linguistics for decades. Since the1940s and50s, anxiety has become one of the main focuses of educational psychology in Western countries. And in the following decades, the research of second language acquisition has developed greatly, whose investigation emphasis starts to shift from some external factors of learning and teaching to internal factors of learners, such as anxiety. In this period, the study of foreign language anxiety (FLA), which is considered to be one of the most influential affective variables, has attracted the attention of many researchers. FLA refers to a distinct complex of apprehension occurring when a learner with low language proficiency is exposed to foreign language situations. Many FLA studies in the past five decades have proved that FLA is one of the most influential affective factors in foreign language learning. Most studies have also reached a near consensus on the negative relationship between FLA and foreign language learning.In the research of FLA, most studies are focused on general foreign language anxiety instead of language-skill specific anxiety, such as listening. And among the limited number of listening anxiety researches, detailed studies of the two categories of anxiety (trait anxiety and situation-specific anxiety) have long been neglected. Meanwhile, most of these researches choose the subjects of college students instead of higher vocational college students. As for the alleviation of listening anxiety, most researches just put forward some learning strategies in general, or resort to meta-cognitive or cognitive strategies other than affective strategies only. Therefore, based on the fruitful previous researches, the present study sets out to probe into the state of foreign language listening anxiety (FLLA), use of English listening anxiety affective coping strategies (ELAACS), and listening achievement (LA) of higher vocational college students in China, further discuss the four types of sources of FLLA, and suggest some possible affective coping strategies.This study adopts three instruments including group interviews, listening tests and two questionnaires with five-point Likert scales. The subjects are85higher vocational college students from Anhui Institute of International Business. The results show that the level of the subjects’listening achievement is rather low, and their FLLA is pervasively strong. The difference analyses show that there exist significant differences in subjects’listening achievement and use of affective coping strategies between students with low anxiety and students with high anxiety, and there are significant differences in using affective coping strategies between students with low listening achievement and high listening achievement. According to the results of the correlation analyses, LA is negatively correlated with both FLLA and ELAACS at the significant level, but there exists a significantly positive correlation between FLLA and ELAACS. In the sub-levels of FLLA and ELAACS, both situation-specific anxiety and its coping strategies show stronger correlation with listening achievement. This indicates that they have more effect on foreign language learning and are more valuable in anxiety study. Then based on the results drawn from the questionnaires and group interviews, the study further discusses the degrees of four sources of listening anxiety, and suggest some corresponding affective coping strategies. This study aims to help create a low-anxiety environment in English listening classes or listening tests for higher vocational college students, and further improve their listening achievement. Thus, it has great significance for English listening learning and teaching in higher vocational colleges in China.The findings of this study may supplement the researches on foreign language anxiety and learning strategies, and further extend the second language acquisition study.