Investigation Into English Classroom Anxiety Of College Students

Anxiety is one of the affective factors that has been studied in the psychological domain and is believed to be relevant to the second language acquisition. Gardner and MacIntyre deem that anxiety is the strongest negative correlate of language achievement. Krashen also speculates in his Affective Filter Hypothesis that anxiety is one of the most important affective factors serving as the affective filter for the language input. Oxford R.L. sums that anxiety is negatively correlated with grades in language courses, proficiency test performance, self-confidence in language learning and self-esteem. Basically, there are three approaches to the study of anxiety. They are trait anxiety, state anxiety and situation-specific anxiety. Foreign language anxiety is the anxiety restricted to the language learning situation. It is the fear or apprehension that occurs when a learner is expected to perform in the second or foreign language. Researchers such as Maclntyre, Horwitz and Gardner have identified three main components of the foreign language anxiety, they are the communication apprehension, the fear of negative social evaluation and the test anxiety. Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) is a measure of anxiety specific to language learning developed by Horwitz et al.The writer probed into some of the personal correlates of English anxiety through making investigation into English classroom anxiety of 120 college students in Chengdu with the use of FLCAS questionnaire and by making some qualitative studies such as introspection of learners' own English learning process, classroom observation and post -test interview. The study results confirmed the existenceand significance of English classroom anxiety among 106 college students in Chengdu. It showed that as one of the components of language anxiety, speech anxiety was checked to be intense and pervasive among subjects. The result of the correlation study between Graduate English Qualifying Test (GET) grades and English anxiety scores measured by FLCAS supported the research result that language anxiety is negatively correlated with grades in language course. Besides, test anxiety with GET among graduates, especially among those high-anxiety subjects were also intense. Relevant study on teacher -related factors of English anxiety may usher language teachers to take positive measures to alleviate high-anxiety learners' English anxiety so that they may have more efficient learning and teaching. The thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One is an introduction, introducing the purpose and significance of the study and the overall structure of the thesis.Chapter Two is the literature review related to the theory of language anxiety in applied psychology and the related studies. To elaborate some of the important learners' personal and teachers' related correlating factors of language anxiety, the writer combines the established theories with her personal research results from classroom observation, students' introspection and the investigations made into some the effects of teaching task requirements on English anxiety.Chapter Three involves the investigation into English classroom anxiety of college students in Chengdu. In this chapter, the writer elaborates the aim, the methods, procedure, instruments and data processing of the investigation.Chapter Four is the results and the discussions of the investigation which involve the analysis of descriptive statistics, comparative studies between and among different groups, correlation studies between and among different groups. In order to explore more deeply into some of the correlating factors of English anxiety and to probe into the relationship between English anxiety and English course performance, the writer makes further comparative study between high-anxiety learners and low- anxiety learners in the post-test interview.Chapter Five is the last chapter concerning evaluations of the significance of this research results. The writer summarizes the major findings of the study, its theoretical, methodological...