On Relationship Between University Students' Foreign Language Anxiety, Cognitive Style And Foreign Language Performance

As one of the normal emotions, anxiety research is always the important domain in psychology. Foreign language anxiety, as a special scene anxiety, has been gradually paid attention to by more 'and more linguists and psychologists. Many studies show that during the process of learning a foreign language, if anxiety surpasses a certain level, the higher the degree of anxiety, the lower the English performance.As for cognitive style ,One of individual differences , some people thought that cognitive style was related to the academic performance of students (Wu Yi'an etc., 1993), while others thought that cognitive style would result in the differences in several courses(such as mathematics),but cognitive style was not related to academic performance as a \vhole(Zhang Houcan, 1988).Reviewed the researches in the past, we found that people rarely investigated the relation between foreign language anxiety and the academic performance, This study sought to explore this relationship, and in this paper we examined and further testified the relationship between the foreign language anxiety and English performance, cognitive style and English performance. In our research we randomly sampled 454 subjects, which were freshmen came from Anhui Normal University. Students' independent-style/ dependent-style cognitive styles were measured by embedded figures test (EFT), and their foreign language anxiety was surveyed by foreign language classroom anxiety scale (FLCAS). The result shows:Firstly, There is a significant gender difference in foreign language anxiety. Male university students' foreign language anxiety level is significantly higher than that of female students'. Foreign language anxiety has no professional differences, liberal arts and science students have no significant difference in foreign language anxiety.Secondly, There is a significant gender difference and a significant professional difference in university students' English performance. Female students perform better than male students in learning English, and art students' English achievement is significantly higher than that of science students'.Thirdly, There are professional significant differences in cognitive style; science students' field of independence is significantly higher than that of the Arts students. There is no gender difference in cognitive style.In the end, foreign language anxiety is significantly positively related to cognitive style. There are significant differences between students of field-independence and those of field-dependence. Foreign language anxiety of independent-style is significantly higher than those of dependent-style. Foreign language anxiety is significantly negatively correlated with English performance, while cognitive style is not related to English performance.