A Study Of The Relationships Among Foreign Language Anxiety, Language Learning Strategy Use, And Foreign Language Achievement

Language learning strategies have received considerable attention from researchers as the focus on 'how to teach' has shifted to 'how to learn'. Evidence shows that language learning strategy use is closely associated with foreign/second language achievements, though different results concerning the concrete relationship between them occur. For instance, there are different findings about the strategy types that are related to foreign/second language achievement. Researchers have also found that many factors influence language learning strategy use, including learner factors and environmental factors.Language anxiety is one of the learner variables that have been given the most attention by language researchers. There is a great deal of research on the relationship between language anxiety and foreign/second language achievements, but the results are inconsistent. Some research shows that language anxiety has negative effects on foreign/second language achievement, while some shows that language anxiety has positive or even no effects on foreign/second language achievement. Maclntyre (1994) noted that language anxiety is a factor that influences language learning strategy use. Maclntyre and Noels (1996) found that language anxiety was negatively correlated with language learning strategy use. So far, however, no empirical research has been done to investigate the relationship between foreign language anxiety and language learning strategy use in China.Therefore, a survey was conducted to examine the relationships among foreign language anxiety, language learning strategy use, and foreign language achievement. Two questionnaires were employed as the instruments in the present study, in which 421 undergraduate students (335 are non-English majors and 86 are English majors) participated. One is the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) developed by Oxford (1990); the other is the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) developed by Horwitz et al. (1986). Pearson correlations and T-test were computed to answer the following four questions: 1) What's the relationship between language learning strategy use and foreignlanguage achievement?2) What's the relationship between foreign language anxiety and foreign language achievement?3) What's the relationship between foreign language anxiety and language learning strategy use?4) Are there gender differences in language learning strategy use, levels of foreign language anxiety, and foreign language achievement?The results are as follows:1) For non-English majors, the use of five types of language learning strategies was positively correlated with foreign language achievement; while for English majors, the use of two types of language learning strategies was positively correlated with foreign language achievement.2) For both non-English and English majors, foreign language anxiety was negatively correlated with foreign language achievement.3) For both non-English and English majors, foreign language anxiety and language learning strategy use were negatively correlated.4) For non-English majors, there were significant gender differences in language learning strategy use, and females used strategies more often than males; while for English majors, except affective strategies, no gender differences were found in the use of other five types of language learning strategies. For both non-English and English majors, there were no gender differences in levels of foreign language anxiety.The author discussed the results of the present study from both cognitive and affective perspectives. It is expected that the findings of this study will help foreign language teachers further understand the effects of language learning strategy use and foreign language anxiety on foreign language teaching, which enable them to help the students learn a foreign language better.