An Investigation Of Vocational College Students' English Learning Anxiety

This study intends to investigate the current situation of vocational college students'English-learning anxiety. The research questions to be addressed in the study are as follows:1) What is the current situation of vocational college students'English-learning anxiety?2) What are the underlying factors responsible for those students'English learning anxiety?The theoretical framework for this study includes affect theory and humanism, which emphasize the need to understand the psychology of learners.The research designs includes two parts: the former is a questionnaire;the latter, an interview. The questionnaire consists of 25 items. About 367 vocational college students responded to the questionnaire. Then ten subjects were selected through stratified random sampling as interviewees.The major findings are summarized as follows:1) Most of the vocational college students are found to feel nervous about English learning, but they have little or no knowledge about the concept of anxiety or its negative effect on their English learning because they have seldom learned about what anxiety is.2) Most of the vocational college students show lower anxiety in individual after-class coaching provided by the teacher or in after-class communication with the teacher because in such cases there are no other students available, seeing or hearing their performances, and they could not lose face when they make mistakes in answering the teachers'questions. However, as English classroom instructions are still mainly examination-orientated, students manifest higher anxiety in class; they are worried about making mistakes or lag behind others in examinations, which in turn affect their self-confidence about learning English.3) As most of the vocational college students have little chance in class to practice their audio-lingual skills, they feel nervous or anxious when asked to perform reading and speaking tasks in class. Moreover, lack of self-confidence and fear of getting negative feedback from the teacher also contribute to their high anxiety in class.4) There are various factors responsible for vocational college students'debilitating anxiety, including their weakness in English basic skills, fear of negative comments by the teacher, lack of intrinsic motivation or self–confidence, incorrect choice of learning strategies, teachers'inappropriate response to students'performances, and lack of proper communications between teachers and students.The results of the study also have strong pedagogical implications: first, effective measures should be taken to enable students to know more about anxiety and to show them the ways to overcome their anxiety in English learning. Second, high anxiety is harmful but low anxiety is not always helpful because low anxiety may suggest lack of English learning initiative and motivation, which is also debilitating instead of facilitating.This study is limited in two ways.1) The population is still not big enough. In spite of 367 subjects involved in the study, still the results may be more or less one-sided or subjective.2) Though stratified-random sampling was employed for the interview, it might not ensure that the interviewees represent the whole population.