An Empirical Study On The Relationship Between Foreign Language Anxiety And Corrective Feedback

In 1970's Selinker proposed interlanguage hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, interlanguage is a transitional language system evolving from native language to target language in the process of second language acquisition. It has a structurally intermediate status between native and target language and evolves toward the correct form of the target language. In the process of interlanguage development, it is inevitable for language learners to make errors. If the learners'errors are not corrected in the long run, these errors would be considered to be the correct form of language input, and in the end fossilization occurs. However, according to Krashen and Terrel's Natural Approach (1983), language teachers should not pay much attention to correct students'errors at any given stage of language learning. The most important for them to do is to create a low anxiety environment and provide comprehensible input for the students so as to promote language acquisition. Krashen also (1985) states that anxiety is an important affective factor which plays an important role in language learning. If learners'anxiety levels are high, their affective filters would be high and they would receive less comprehensible input, and vice versa. Inspired by the two contrasting views, fear of fossilization and raised affective filter, the thesis aims to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between foreign language anxiety and corrective feedback. The subjects of the present study are non English major freshmen in Xiangtan University and Hunan University of Science and Technology, two classes in each university (167 students altogether). This study adopts quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Quantitative research involves administering questionnaires to investigate the subjects'overall foreign language anxiety levels, the relationship between foreign language anxiety and language proficiency, the relationship between foreign language anxiety and attitude toward corrective feedback. SPSS 13.0 version is used to compute the collected data. Qualitative research involves interviewing the subjects about their preferences toward corrective feedback and the sources of anxiety. The author keeps a detailed note of the results.There are five major findings of the empirical study: 1. There exists an average level of anxiety of non English major freshmen, but is significantly different with regard to proficiency levels. 2. Students have moderately positive attitude toward error correction, but the attitude score is different with regard to proficiency levels. 3. There exists negative correlation between students'anxiety level and their attitude toward error correction. 4. Students think that recast, repetition and elicitation are less anxiety-provoking than interruption, clarification request, explicit correction and metalinguistic feedback. 5. Various sources of anxiety are revealed from the interview such as low self esteem, lack of confidence, competitiveness, personality, speaking English in front of the class, teachers'harsh manner of correcting students'errors, lack of preparation, and uneven allocation of turns.Accordingly, the author puts forward some suggestions on how to treat students'errors and how to improve students'language learning by alleviating students'anxiety in foreign language classroom.