A Study On Classroom Risk-taking Behavior And English Proficiency

This thesis intends to investigate the characteristics of the Chinese university English majors'risk-taking behaviors and find out the relationship between students'risk-taking behaviors and their general EFL written proficiency and oral proficiency as well as their oral accuracy and fluency.This study was conducted using research instruments including a questionnaire survey, a picture description task and a retrospective interview. The subjects chosen for the present study are 74 third-year English majors enrolled at a university in Nanjing, who were required to complete Questionnaire of Risk-taking Behaviors in Classroom setting. Based on the results of the questionnaire, ten subjects who scored highest and another ten who scored lowest in the questionnaire survey were selected to complete a picture description task. Three subjects were selected for a subsequent interview. Through the analyses of both the quantitative and qualitative data, the present study generates the following findings:1) Generally speaking, most college third-year English majors are moderate risk-takers, however, they behave differently in terms of the different aspects of risking-taking behaviors. While most of the students seem to place a high value on risk-taking in English learning, their risk-taking behaviors in the actual English learning process are affected by different factors. Participants are not willing to use complex or difficult linguistic expressions and are not very tolerant of possible linguistic incorrectness. However, they seem to demonstrate less hesitancy in using a new linguistic element.2) Students'English written proficiency is not found to be related to their risk-taking behaviors.3) Students'general oral proficiency is not found to be related to their risk-taking behaviors, nor is their oral fluency or oral accuracy. And no significant differences are found between students with different risk-taking levels and their general oral proficiency as well as oral fluency and oral accuracy.Though no correlation is found between the subjects'classroom risk-taking behaviors and their oral proficiency as well as their oral accuracy and oral fluency, there does exist a tendency that higher risk-takers seem to make more errors and fewer repairs in oral production than lower risk-takers did.