A Study On The Effect Of Learning Strategy Training On Foreign Language Anxiety

Learners have been of more important concern, since the focus of foreign language teaching has shifted from "how to teach" to "how to learn". Learning strategies, foreign language anxiety and achievement interact with each other. How to lower the negative effect of foreign language anxiety is a big challenge for foreign language teaching. We hypothesize that foreign language learning strategy training is conducive to lowering language learning anxiety and improving achievement.The research used the empirical research method to complete the study.80 English major sophomores (enrolled in 2008) of two classes in three-year college of Beijing Jiaotong University participated in this study:40 belonged to the experimental group and 40, the control group.The researcher used three tests in evaluating students'development in use of learning strategies, foreign language anxiety and achievement before and after we implemented the learning strategy training. Interviews and classroom observations were conducted and subjects were asked to keep learning diaries during the whole study process.The three tests includes College English Test Band Four (CET-4), Oxford's 50-item Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) and English Learning Anxiety Scale- revision of 33-item Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) by Horwitz et al. The independent variable in this study is learning strategy training; dependent variables are foreign language anxiety and CET4 scores.The following research questions were explored in this study:1) How is the general situation of foreign language anxiety for three-year college English major sophomore classes? 2) What types of language learning strategies do they adopt and with what frequency in their language learning? 3). What is the relationship between foreign language anxiety and learning strategies among the English major sophomores? Are there significant differences in the choice of learning strategies between the low-anxiety learners, moderate-anxiety and high-anxiety ones? 4). What is the effect of learning strategy training on foreign language anxiety and students' achievement?Findings through questionnaires of the study are as follows:1) Most English major sophomores suffer from different degrees of foreign language anxiety, which hinders their learning in different extents.2) Subjects we selected use all the six categories of strategies with differentiated low frequency. Among six categories of strategies, compensation strategies and cognitive strategies are used more often than affective and social strategies.3) The correlation between foreign language anxiety and learning strategies is negative. The final result of the whole study shows that learning strategy training is helpful to alleviate foreign language anxiety and facilitate foreign language learning.Eventually, the common assumptions underlying the previous strategy training and researches were critically examined. Macro and micro teaching suggestions were accordingly discussed and proposed based on the study, which concern teacher's roles in strategy training, teaching techniques and strategies to minimize devastating effect of foreign language anxiety.