A Study Of The Correlations Between English Language Anxiety And The Use Of Language Learning Strategies

As one of the affective elements, anxiety is a common phenomenon exists in learning. Some researchers propose that anxiety may enhance or facilitate learners' learning to some extent, aiming at encouraging learners to be more motivated to involve in their learning and hence achieve success over their expectation. However, in the actual learning and teaching process, learners are more easily to be disturbed by anxiety, the observed anxiety even prevents them from performing well as they were thought to be. As a result, more failed cases occurred in learning. This kind of phenomena is more universal in the context of China, referring to the learning of English. Consequently, the definition of language anxiety comes into being.Language learning strategies, according to Rebecca L. Oxford, are steps learners take to enhance acquisition, store, draw, and use information. More generally, they are methods and steps learners take in their learning course to aid and facilitate their learning. By using different kinds of strategies, learners'language proficiency, self-confidence and enthusiasm will be improved. The use of language learning strategies are influenced by some factors.In this thesis, quantitative study is carried out to investigate the correlations between language anxiety and language learning strategies. The research questions to be addressed in the study are the following:1. What is the actual situation of Chinese second-year non-English majors suffering from language anxiety?2. What is the tendency of Chinese second-year non-English majors when they employ language learning strategies in their learning?3. What are the correlations between language anxiety and language learning strategies?93 students from College of Physics and Information Technology and College of History and Culture at Shaanxi Normal University were involved in this study. After the completion of questionnaires of FLCAS by Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope (1986) and SILL by Oxford (1990), their scores were put into computer and analyzed by SPSS (version 17.0). The results indicate that1. Chinese second-year non-English majors experienced different levels of language anxiety in their English learning. Generally, male students experienced more anxiety than female students. However, no evident difference was observed between learners from science and liberal arts.2. In the use of language learning strategies, compensation strategies were the most frequently used strategies among Chinese second-year non-English majors, followed by metacognitive strategies, affective strategies, social strategies, cognitive strategies and memory strategies. Female learners were more likely to employ language learning strategies than male learners to facilitate their learning. However, no evident differences were observed between learners from science and liberal arts.3. Language anxiety and language learning strategies were negatively correlated. The higher level the language anxiety students experienced, the less likely they would employ language learning strategies; the lower level of language anxiety they experienced, the more likely they would employ language learning strategies to facilitate their learning.