An Empirical Study On Foreign Language Anxiety Of Higher Vocational College Students

Foreign language anxiety is fear or apprehension occurring when a learner is expected to perform in the second or foreign language.Many previous studies or teaching practice have showed that anxiety is widely spread among college students in China.The research aims at investigating the characteristics of Higher Vocational College students' foreign language anxiety,studying the correlation between anxiety levels and English learning achievements and comparing difference between English majors and non-English majors.The research was carried out among 172 second year female college students in Guangdong Women's Polytechnic College and utilized the FLCAS and College English Test Band-4(CET-4) scores as the instrument.The results indicated that,Higher Vocational College students experienced relatively higher anxiety level and Fear of Negative Evaluation contributes most to foreign language anxiety;there was significant difference of anxiety level between English majors and non-English majors(T-value = -3.714,p＜001);the foreign language anxiety level is negatively correlated to the students' language learning achievement(r=-.679,P＜.001).Implications of the fmdings are given,limitations of the present study are mentioned and suggestions for future research are also proposed.