Relationship Between Anxiety Level And English Language Learning Achievement

Since 1970s, researchers abroad have been conducting studies on language anxiety, which is fear or apprehension occurring when a learner is expected to perform in a second or foreign language. It ranks high among factors influencing language learning, regardless of whether the setting is informal (learning language outside the classroom) or formal (in the language classroom). It is not just a case of general classroom anxiety being transferred to the foreign language learning but a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process. Research has shown that language anxiety is a predictor of success in language class and it affects all the three stages (i.e. the input stage, the processing stage, and the output stage) of cognitive processing in second language acquisition or learning. These studies have also shown persistent negative correlations among foreign language learning anxiety, foreign language learning achievement, self-perceived proficiency, attitude and motivation. And they usually use course grades as achievement measures.English researchers and teachers in China have taken advantage of the theories and achievements of language anxiety in western countries for reference. Quite a number of empirical research studies on English learning anxiety have been conducted in the Chinese context. But the subjects of most of these studies are undergraduates, graduates, English majors or non-English majors in universities or colleges. Few studies have investigated the effect of anxiety on the achievement of students from vocational colleges or schools. Therefore, the present author chose 221 second-year English majors from Yantai Vocational College as participants, adopted a questionnaire, which comprised the adapted Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (the FLCAS) and the Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (the FLRAS), the listening parts of 2003 and 2002 national university entrance Englishexam paper, the objective part of 2003 national university entrance English exam paper and an oral test to examine empirically the correlations between language anxieties, the overall language achievement and specific language skills (listening, speaking and reading) under a relaxed situation. In order to decide the correlations among anxiety, self-perceived proficiency, motivation, attitude and gender, a background questionnaire was also constructed. The collected data were dealt with statistically by using the SPSS 10.0 to find the above correlations.The findings of the study suggest that English anxiety is significantly and negatively correlated with English achievement and self-perceived proficiency. The analysis of variance indicates that 1) a significant difference exists for both anxiety level and achievement among the three groups of high-perceived proficiency, average-perceived proficiency and low-perceived proficiency (p<0.01); 2 ) a significant difference exists for both anxiety level and achievement among the three groups of positive, neither positive nor negative and negative attitudes toward English (p<0.01); 3) the difference in both anxiety level and achievement of the participants with different levels of motivation for learning English is very significant (p<0.01). Independent samples t-test demonstrates that male students are a little more anxious than female students in class, but the difference is not significant. Female students have better learning outcomes. The difference between males and females in listening and overall proficiency is very significant. One finding of this study which is quite different from that of previous research is that attitude seems to be the determinant in English learning in vocational colleges or schools. The students who have positive attitudes toward English are less anxious and have better learning outcomes. The sources and reasons of their anxiety are also analyzed in detail. At the same time, it explored the sources and reasons of students' English...