A Study On University Students' English Listening Anxiety, Listening Level And Listening Comprehension Strategies

Studies on English listening anxiety began in the 1980's. E. Horwitz and John Cope (1986) points out that anxiety is the most obviously psychological phenomenon in listening and speaking process, and listening obstacle caused by anxiety is worth studying. Studies on listening comprehension strategies also began at that time. According to their subjects'oral reports, these studies emphasize the differences of strategy use of students with different language proficiency (DeFillipis 1980; Murphy 1985; O'Malley et al 1989; Rost &Ross 1991; Vandergrift 1992). However, because of the differences of subjects and instruments, the studies haven't arrived at agreement. Domestic studies began in the 1990's, and they have made great progress both in width and depth based on the previous studies.Despite of the progress, researchers and educators still need to find out the reasons and conditions of listening anxiety, and two-two relationships between English listening anxiety, listening level and listening comprehension strategies so as to build a theoretical framework for anxiety and strategies.Therefore, this thesis obtained three groups of subjects through stratified-random sampling at a foreign language school of a Chinese university. The number of valid samples was 288, including 123 male students and 165 female ones; 141 students in Arts and 147 students in Science; 147 students in high grades and 141 students in low grades. In addition, the Chinese version ELAS and ELCS were employed to discover the relationship between English listening anxiety, listening level and listening comprehension strategies. All the data were clicked into my computer and handled by SPSS 14.0 for Windows. Item analysis, descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation analysis, paired-samples T-test analysis, one-way ANOVA and Cronbach's alpha were performed during the study.The results show that students experience listening anxiety: male students, students in Science and students in high grades experience higher anxiety than their counterparts. English listening anxiety is negatively related to listening level and listening comprehension strategies. There is a positive relationship between listening comprehension strategies and listening level. Students employ appropriate strategies to reduce listening anxiety and improve listening level, among which cognitive strategies are used most frequently.