A Survey Into The Relation Between Foreign Language Anxiety And Learning Strategy Of Higher Vocational College Students

Since 1970's, with the development of general linguistics, psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, researchers'attention has shifted from"teaching"to"learning". Learners'variables have been given more and more attention of which foreign language anxiety and language learning strategy are two important learner variables. Many researches find that there is the tendency that foreign language anxiety has a negative effect on foreign language learning whereas language learning strategy has positive effects on foreign language learning if properly used. It is also found that foreign language anxiety may not be alleviated simply through certain teaching methods and the change of teachers'beliefs. Some research findings suggest that effective learning strategy may help lower foreign language anxiety, while not so much work has been done on the relation between foreign language anxiety and language learning strategy especially selecting students in higher vocational college as subjects who are different from those in common universities in backgrounds and aims of education. So the present thesis attempts to investigate the relation of foreign language anxiety and language learning strategy among these group students by using both quantitative and qualitative researches.The subjects in this thesis were 160 non-English majors from Shijiazhuang Law and Commerce Vocational College. A modified scale of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) developed by Horwitz et al. (1986), Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) developed by Oxford (1990) and English achievement were used for quantitative study. The data were analyzed with Statistical Package for Social Science13.0 (SPSS 13.0). Individual interviews were conducted among ten chosen subjects to supplement the results of quantitative study. Results indicated that: (1) generally there was high level foreign language anxiety among subjects with communication apprehension ranking first. There was no significant gender difference, but negative correlation existed between foreign language anxiety and foreign language achievements; (2) the subjects"sometimes use"all six subcategories of language learning strategy, and compensation strategies received the highest use frequency while social strategies rank the lowest; (3) there were significant negative correlations between foreign language anxiety and the overall use of language learning strategies; three strategies (cognitive, metacognitive and affective strategies) had prediction on foreign language anxiety; the differences in language learning strategies usage between high and low anxiety groups were significant; in terms of specific strategies, there were both similarities and differences between high and low anxiety groups: both two groups frequently employed compensation strategies, while they adopted memory and social strategies less frequently and there were significant differences between metacognitve and affective strategies as far as ranking was concerned.Then, based on the results, some pedagogical implications were provided: firstly, it was expected teachers would take measures to lower the unnecessary foreign language anxiety; secondly, relevant strategy training should be conducted by the joint efforts of teachers and learners; thirdly, according to the conclusion that different anxiety groups adopted different strategy types, teachers should foster strategy use in terms of different anxiety groups.