Test Anxiety And Test Performance: An Emprical Study On Gender Differences In Nmet Among Chinese High School Esl Learners

Test anxiety and gender differences are currently receiving an increasing amount ofattention in the field of language testing. The present study aims to investigatewhether there is a significant difference on gender differences when candidates takeNMET under test anxiety situations.198students taking the2013Shaanxi NMET inXianyang Caihong High School were selected for this study. Each candidate wasrequired to submit their scores of three Model Tests and the final score of NMET.SPSS, TAI and the questionnaire were applied as the instruments for the current study.It was found that there is a significant difference for female students between thedegree of test anxiety and the score of NMET. But there is not a significant differencefor male students between the degree of test anxiety and the score of NMET. Anotherconclusion was also addressed that for both male and female students with high scoresfrom NMET, there is a positive correlation between high traits test anxiety and highscores. The aspects of anxiety were examined accordingly. Fear of other’s negativeevaluation is the most important factor. The findings may contribute to the field ofapplied linguistics as well as psychology and anthropology, students, teachers andpolicymakers. Research limitations and suggestions for future research were alsoexamined in the study.