Study On The Correlation Between Foreign Language Anxiety And English Listening Comprehension

Affective factors play an important part in language learning. Foreign language anxiety is an important affective factor in the study of foreign language. Although the studies on foreign language anxiety are rich up to now, the researches on the correlation between English listening comprehension and anxiety of different kinds and different levels are rare.This dissertation aims to make a study on the correlation between English listening comprehension and foreign language anxiety in China's natural English class. It focuses on these aspects: exploring the existence of foreign language anxiety, facilitative anxiety and debilitative anxiety of non-English major students in the process of English listening comprehension and their correlations with the performance of English listening comprehension; comparing the differences in English listening performance among the students with difference levels of anxiety; comparing the differences in the anxiety level among the students with different levels of English listening proficiency; examining the gender differences of anxiety in English listening comprehension.Some anxiety scales of high reliability and validity are used in this dissertation to test the anxiety level of these subjects. Pearson correlation is used to analysis the correlations between listening comprehension and different levels and kinds of the anxiety. One-Way ANOVA is used to testify the significance of the differences in listening performance among these three groups with low, middle and high anxiety levels, and to check the differences in anxiety among the students with low, middle and high levels of listening proficiency. Independent-Samples T Test is used to check the significance of gender difference of anxiety.The results show that: there is a negative correlation between foreign language anxiety and the performance of English listening comprehension. The higher the level of anxiety is, the more the significant correlation between anxiety and listening test scores is. There is significant difference in test scores between the students with high level of anxiety and those with low or middle level. Students with different levels of listening proficiency have significant differences in the degree of anxiety. There are facilitative anxiety and debilitative anxiety. There is no gender difference in anxiety level. This study proves that foreign language anxiety is still one of the important factors affecting the efficiency of English listening study. In college English teaching, teachers should pay attention to the individual differences of students, and try to use strategies, such as creating a harmonious classroom environment, inputting background information, etc. to help students reduce foreign language anxiety in English listening comprehension.