Relationship Between Language Anxiety And Some Other Variables Of Chinese English Language Learners

Anxiety is a complicated psychological phenomenon in foreign language learning process, involving both cognitive and affective factors. Compared with all those elements affecting foreign language learning, anxiety is, relatively speaking, one of the most prominent and powerful factors that exert great influence on the process. Based on the hypothesis that English learners have strong foreign language anxiety if they identify them as poor language learners, this study tries to find out the relationship between foreign language anxiety and some other individual difference variables, namely achievement motivation, English learning self-efficacy, and belief in giftedness for foreign language learning. At last, a further analysis of the potential sources of foreign language anxiety is made.In order to answer the above questions, both a quantitative and a qualitative analysis are done. Questionnaires are used for 155 subjects from 36 universities all over China, including Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale, Achievement Motivation Scale, English Learning Self-Efficacy Scale and Belief in Giftedness for Foreign Language Learning Scale, and a further question about the sources of foreign language anxiety. For the four scales, SPSS 16.0 is used for quantitative data analysis. For the sources, a summary of qualitative analysis is made by the researcher.The findings of this study suggest that many students are experiencing significant foreign language anxiety in response to at least some aspects of foreign language learning. The result shows that there is a significant negative correlation between the score of learners'language anxiety and the score of learners'achievement motivation. Foreign language classroom anxiety and English learning self-efficacy are strongly and negatively related with each other. Belief in giftedness alone does not lead to increased second language anxiety, but the giftedness belief might make an important contribution to the expectations, attitudes, and particularly motivation of second language learners. The potential sources of foreign language learning anxiety are: personal and interpersonal issues; learner's language beliefs; instructor beliefs about language teaching; instructor-learner interactions; classroom procedures; testing.Meanwhile, several pedagogical implications to reduce foreign language anxiety are presented for bettering foreign language teaching, which are: decrease the peer pressure; create a relaxed environment in class; set up a correct language learning belief; choose a proper way to correct mistakes; hang out with students more often after class.At last, some limitations and recommendations are made for future research on the individual difference variables relating to foreign language studies, with the hope that more enlightening research will be stimulated and better knowledge about foreign language learning anxiety can be gained.