An Investigation Into Foreign Language Anxiety Of Non-english Majors In A Vocational College

In recent years, more and more concern has been paid to the anxiety problem in language learning by foreign language educators and researchers at home and aboard since Krashen put forward the affective filter hypothesis. Language anxiety ranks high among factors influencing language learning, regardless of whether the setting is informal or formal. And learner's potential may be compromised in the presence of high level of language anxiety. So the attention to foreign language anxiety is of vital significance for the improvement of learners'effective learning.Being a part of higher education, vocational education is playing more and more important role in the modern society. The present study aims to explore the foreign language anxiety experienced by non-English majors in the vocational college. Three research questions are raised as followed: 1). What is the general tendency of English learning anxiety for the vocational college non-English majors? 2). Is there a correlation between students'foreign language anxiety and their foreign language proficiency? 3). Are there any differences between male and female students in foreign language anxiety?The quantitative study is conducted to find out the answers to the above questions. The subjects, including 45 female students and 94 male students, are chosen at random form Jiujiang Vocational and Technical College in Jiangxi Province. All the participants are required to finish the questionnaire in which the background information, the FLCAS designed by Horwitz, two open-ended questions are presented. The quantitative analysis of the data shows that: 1) the vocational students experience high level of language anxiety; 2) the students'language anxiety has a negative correlation with their English proficiency; 3) the male students perceive higher level of anxiety than female students. And five causes for their foreign language anxiety and corresponding strategies are discussed according to the participants'response to the open-ended questions.