An Empirical Study Of English Listening Anxiety Of Non-English Majors

For many years, the role of anxiety in foreign language learning or second language acquisition has attracted great attention of numerous researchers. Various researches show that nearly one third to one half of the students experienced anxiety during language learning and language anxiety is one of the key factors in predicting learners' success or failure of learning. However, through a survey of the relevant research literature, the present author finds that most researchers or scholars only studied the general language anxiety in the learning process extensively and did not further investigate the language-skill-specific anxiety. The studies on listening anxiety were especially limited. As we all know, listening, which is a complex intelligence activity, is dynamic, temporary and fleeting. It is natural and more likely for listeners to be anxious and nervous because of not understanding the information while listening. On the other hand, the author has noticed that in China, which has the largest number of foreign language learners in the world, the empirical studies relevant to listening anxiety are even scarcer. In Chinese current English language teaching practice, listening comprehension is always a relatively weak link. With the proportion of listening comprehension increasing in the College English Test Band 4 and Band 6, how to improve the teaching of listening comprehension and how to promote the students' listening proficiency brook no delay. Based on such a background, this thesis attempts to carry out an empirical and systematical study of the English listening anxiety of non-English majors, hoping to make contributions to the practical instructions of listening teaching and learning from the perspective of affective variables.The major purposes of this study include: first, to study the state of university non-English majors' English listening anxiety and its influence on listening proficiency; to explore the main factors leading to listening anxiety and the effects of listening anxiety factors on listening proficiency; second, to examine the impact of specific demographic variables on listening anxiety and listening proficiency and to find out the influence of listening strategies on listening anxiety; third, to further identify the potential sources of English listening anxiety in Chinese context.The data of the study were collected via a questionnaire survey of 202 non-English major sophomores in Linyi Normal University and the interviews of ten students among them. The instruments are Chinese-version Background Information Questionnaire (BIQ), English Listening Anxiety Scale (ELAS); English Listening Strategy Scale (ELSS), listening proficiency test of CET-4 and interviews. With the help of Statistical Passage for Social Science (SPSS 10.0), descriptive statistics, comparison of means, pearson correlation analysis, principle component analysis, independent samples t-test and reliability analysis were operated with the target samples.The findings indicate that most university non-English majors do experience a moderate level of English listening anxiety and the listening anxiety has a significant negative correlation with listening proficiency; listening proficiency is affected by the levels of listening anxiety; low-anxiety group obtains higher listening scores than high-anxiety group and there exists a significant difference between these two groups. Among all the anxiety factors, tension from listeners' personal characteristics, which involves listeners' background knowledge, learning style, etc., is revealed to be the main factor contributing to listening anxiety. Lack of confidence in listening is recognized as the most significant predictor of listening proficiency level. With regard to background variables, there are significant gender differences in listening anxiety and listening proficiency. Male students are more anxious than females, while females have higher listening proficiency than males. English listening anxiety is demonstrated to have significant relationships with interest, self-rated listening proficiency and self-reported listening anxiety, but no significant relationships between English listening anxiety and time, listening anxiety and motivation are found. Low-anxiety group is found to differ significantly from high-anxiety group in the use of the overall listening strategies. Low-anxiety group uses the listening strategies, especially metacognitive strategies more frequently than the high-anxiety group. It is found that the potential sources of English listening anxiety mainly include characteristics of listening activity, characteristics of listening tasks, characteristics of listening materials and inappropriate listening habits, etc.Considering the findings in this study, it is suggested the English teachers should be more aware of the possibility that listening anxiety is responsible for the students' poor performance, while helping students take active and effective measures to overcome such harmful emotional experiences and get better listening results.