A Study On Foreign Language Anxiety Among Medical Students

Foreign language learner variables are receiving more and more attention from language educators. The purpose of this paper is to study foreign language anxiety, one of the affective variables, among medical students.This paper presents the results of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale in 359 medical students. Speech anxiety, test anxiety and peer pressure were found to be among the factors that cause anxiety in medical students. Statistic analysis showed that language anxiety is negatively correlated with language performance; the second year medical students are more anxious in English study than the first year students; there are significant anxiety differences between some classes of students; and there is no significant gender difference in student anxiety.A qualitative study was conducted in which six medical students with different levels of anxiety were interviewed, with a purpose of proposing some suggestions to reduce anxiety from students' perspectives.Implications for teaching can be drawn from the results of this study. Teachers should first acknowledge that language anxiety exists among students and then take proper measures to help them overcome that anxiety. Several strategies are suggested to reduce anxiety: enhancing knowledge and teaching methodology; associating the text with jokes oranecdotes; being friendly rather than authoritarian with students; not putting too much emphasis on mistakes; talking to students outside of the classroom; and being responsive to students' needs.It is hoped that this study can be of help and value to teachers in other colleges as well as medical colleges.