A Study Of Correlations Among Learning Anxiety, Learning Strategies And Academic Achievement For Junior High School Students

Foreign language learning anxiety and learning strategies are two important factors in foreign language learning.The study of these issues began in the 1970 s to 1980 s.Researches within China and abroad mainly focus on the relationship between these two aspects and English achievement.However,in the previous researches,it is found that the major research subjects are high school students,English and non-English major college students,but not junior high school students.Therefore,it is necessary to discuss junior high school students' foreign language learning anxiety,learning strategies and the relationship between them.In this study,94 students from the experimental class of Zhangzhou Experimental Middle School in Fujian Province are selected to do the Oxford(1990)Learning Strategy Scale and the Foreign Language Anxiety Scale task which are reorganized according to the need of Chinese students,the data of which are analyzed by Descriptive statistics,correlation and regression of SPSS 21.0,and the results are as follows:1.Junior high school students are generally anxious about English learning,and the number of the high anxiety students is more than that of low anxiety students.Among all students,the most often used learning strategy is the compensation strategy,and the least often used one is the emotional strategy.The students' English achievements are distributed in an olive-like manner.2.There is a significant negative correlation between anxiety level of junior high school students and their academic achievement.So the higher the degree of anxiety,the lower the English achievement is;foreign language learning anxiety is significantly negatively correlated with cognitive strategies,compensation strategies,metacognitive strategies,memory strategies,affective strategies,and social strategies.And foreign language learning anxiety increases with the decrease of the frequent use of learning strategies.There is a positive correlation between learning strategies and English performance,so English achievement increases with the increase of the frequent use of learning strategies.3.Cognitive strategy is the key factor which significantly influences students' academic achievement,followed by compensation strategy and memory strategy.For high anxiety students,affective strategy is the main factors which influences their academic achievement,followed by memory strategy For middle-anxiety students,compensation strategy is the key factor affecting their academic achievement,followed by social strategy.For low-anxiety students,affective strategy is the key factor affecting their academic achievement,followed by metacognitive strategy.From the results of the above research,we conclude that to overcome learning anxiety and strengthen the instruction of learning strategies are prerequisites to improve junior high school students' English learning achievements.Therefore,teachers should create a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere in the English classroom to help ease their anxiety.Secondly,teachers should help students to adjust their anxiety in foreign language learning.Finally,teachers should guide students to pay attention to the use of memory strategy to improve their academic achievements.