Correlational Study Of Foreign Language Anxiety And Language Learning Strategies For Newly-built-college Students

Language learning strategy (LLS) and foreign language anxiety (FLA) have long been the hot topics for many language researchers. In recent years, more and more researchers have begun to study the relationship between LLS and FLA. Their study subjects are mostly adults, children or high school students, etc. But so far no one has begun to study the newly-built -college students. Therefore, the present study is done to find out the relationship between FLA and LLS for the newly-built-college students.The present study makes an investigation based on 201 newly-built-college students coming from Changzhi College in Shanxi Province. In this study, Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) developed by Horwitz et al (1986), Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) developed by Oxford (1990) and CET-4 scores are used for quantitative study. The data are analyzed with Statistical Package for Social Science 17.0 (SPSS 17.0) including descriptive statistics, independent samples T-test, one-way ANOVA and Pearson product-moment correlation. Results indicate that: (1)for the newly-built -college students, there is generally a high level FLA with communication apprehension ranking first. There are no significant differences in the aspects of gender and major, but there are significant differences in the aspect of English achievements. (2) for the newly-built-college students, they"sometimes use"all six subcategories of LLS and the mean value is 2.6795, which show the uses of overall strategies are lower. Compensation strategies are used most and social strategies least. There are also no significant differences in the aspects of gender and major, but there are significant differences in the aspect of English achievements. (3) for the newly-built-college students, there exists significantly negative correlations between FLA and LLS. Low anxiety students use memory, cognitive, and metacognitive strategies more frequency than medium anxiety students; medium anxiety students use cognitive strategies higher than high anxiety students. In the aspects of affective and social strategies, there are no significant differences among three anxious-levels of students. But the higher English anxiety is, the fewer strategies learners use. Based on the findings, some pedagogical implications are pointed out for the newly-built -college students: firstly, teachers should take some measures to reduce the students'FLA. Secondly, teachers should master the knowledge of LLS and take the strategies'consciousness into classroom. Finally, because different anxiety students adopt different strategies, students should give the corresponding strategy trainings for different students.