Foreign Language Anxiety And Cooperative Learning-A Study Of Non-English Majors In Newly-Established Taizhou University

The study puts forward the following assumptions: compared with those in key universities like the East China University of Politics and Law, the non-English majors in the newly-established Taizhou University suffer from not only the unmodifiable factors like intelligence and language aptitude but the modifiable factors like FL anxiety, both of which can predict students'English proficiency. If we can find what the sources of the students of Taizhou University experiencing such high FL anxiety are and conduct appropriate interventions such as cooperative learning to get around their FL anxiety, then non-English majors from Taizhou University may improve their English proficiency.The preliminary investigation covered the English learning anxiety questionnaires conducted among 154 non-English majors from East China University of Politics and Law, and 183 from Taizhou University as well as the causes of English learning anxiety questionnaires used among the same 183 students from Taizhou University. Then, 86 sophomore non-English majors of Taizhou University who were divided into experimental class and control class participated in the ten-week cooperative learning experiment. In order to evaluate the effects of experiment, FL anxiety questionnaires, English tests and interviews were conducted before and after the experiment.The results of evaluation indicate that with heterogeneous groups, student-centered cooperative learning increased student motivation and self-confidence; enhanced student-student, student-instructor interactions and developed communication skills, which effectively alleviated students'FL anxiety and improved their English proficiency.