On Foreign Language Anxiety Of College Students: Its Empirical Studies And Pedagogical Implications

Foreign language anxiety is fear or apprehension occurring when a learner is expected to perform in a foreign language. As one of the key affective factors in foreign language learning, anxiety is widely spread among college students, which can be attributed to the disciplinary traits of foreign language learning as well as pedagogical notions and methodology. Besides, the national college English test contributes largely to foreign language anxiety of Chinese college students.Based on findings from relevant studies, this paper aims at revealing a global outlook of college students' foreign language anxiety, weighing foreign language anxiety against such personality facets as anxiety and extrovert/ introvert personality and proving the correlation between foreign language anxiety and academic performance. The survey is made to a randomly-selected subject sample of 468 students from Hohai University and Nanjing Finance and Economics University with following instruments: Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale, Catell's Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire ( Part A), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and subjects' scores in CET4.The results indicate that, compared with college students from other countries, those from Chinese universities show relatively higher level of foreign language anxiety; there is significant correlation between state anxiety, trait anxiety and foreign language anxiety but no significant correlation between that and the extroversion/ introversion facet of personality; anxiety at any level is negatively correlated with foreign language performance; the higher anxiety level is, the greater is its negative influence on language study. It is also discovered that speech anxiety contributes the most to foreign language anxiety.The implication of the findings for foreign language anxiety is discussed, anxiety-reduction measures are formulated and directions for further study are proposed.