A Comparative Study On Autonomous English Learning Anxiety Between Sports-major And Arts-major Undergraduates

With a new round of college English teaching reform,autonomous learning has become the mainstream of college English teaching reform as a new teaching concept.And anxiety becomes a hotspot in the foreign language teaching research as one of the learners’ emotional factors.Therefore,efficient autonomous foreign language learning should be based on the status of learners’ anxiety in order to assist learners to achieve their learning goals.Basing on the theory of autonomous learning,this paper probed into the following three questions with both questionnaire and interviews:1.What is the general level of the sports-major and arts-major undergraduates’autonomous English learning anxiety and the distribution of the four factors included in the questionnaire?2.Are there any statistically significant differences between the sports-major and arts-major undergraduates on autonomous English learning anxiety?3.What are the causes of the sports-major and arts-major undergraduates’ autonomous English learning anxiety?In this research,the subjects are 318 sports-major and arts-major freshmen and sophomores from Guangxi Normal University.According to the dimensions of autonomous English learning,the questionnaire is designed by the author.The whole questionnaire includes four factors:learning ability;learning rights;communicative ability and psychological activities.The data are analyzed by SPSS 20.0.The results of the research can be concluded as follows:1.There is a certain level of autonomous English learning anxiety between the sports-major and arts-major undergraduates.Of the four factors,learning ability anxiety ranks highest.2.There are no prominent differences between the sports-major and arts-major undergraduates both in the four factors,but the sports-major undergraduates have a slight higher degree of anxiety than the arts-major undergraduates.3.The major causes of autonomous English learning anxiety in this research are:lack of proper learning strategies;negative learning attitudes;lack of confidence;lack of English cultural knowledge,and so on.This study also has some limitations:the research subjects are limited to the sports-major and arts-major freshmen and sophomores from Guangxi Normal University and do not involve teachers.The future study could enlarge the samples,involve teachers as research subjects and take other variables that trigger autonomous English learning anxiety into consideration.By investigating the situation and causes of autonomous English learning anxiety,the author discusses how to reduce anxiety degree from the aspect of teachers and students respectively,in order to put forward some implications to the autonomous English learning.