A Study Of English Learning Anxiety In Secondary Vocational School

Affective factors play a significant role in language teaching and learning. It is universally acknowledged that language anxiety , one of affective variables, has produced a profound negative effect upon language learning. The present thesis, based upon the information obtained from the questionnaires, consisting of a background questionnaire and the FLCAS (Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale) questionnaire developed by Horwitz et al. (1999), investigates into the correlations between the English language anxiety of 86 vocational school students of grade two in Zhangye to variables concerned and the variability of their English language anxiety resulted from the variables.Most of the previous related studies deal with language anxiety from school teaching and learning environments. However, this paper attempts to investigate into English language anxiety of learners in vocational school and explores English language anxiety from such factors as socio-economic and cultural conditions, students' family backgrounds, students' birthplaces and so on in a certain region. It aims to examine to what extent vocational school students experience English language learning anxiety and the effects of anxiety upon English language learning and explore the contributors to English language anxiety in order to adapt the anxiety psychology experienced by vocational school students in language learning process in case that the effects of the language teaching and learning may be weakened owing to language anxiety.The present paper is composed of six parts. The first part starts with a brief introduction to the purpose and significant of the survey study followed by the definition for conceptions of anxiety, language anxiety, and then analysis the present situation of English teaching and leaning in China. The second part reviews the previous studies in this regard at home and abroad. The third part presents the theory foundations of the research: 1) Krashen's affective filter hypothesis paves the way for the investigation about anxiety; 2) Karen Horney's theory of elementary anxiety; 3)Gagn e R.M.'s theory on conditions of learning and Gardner's theory of social psychology. In Part Four, we first advance the hypothesis, then provide some information concerning the subjects, instruments, the procedure of the investigation as well as the data collection and statistical results analysis which falls into four steps: at the outset is presented the general distributive tendency of the variables related to language anxiety;then descriptive analyses are made out of the data in related to language anxiety; in what follows, an independent-sample T-test is made to find out the factor variability in language anxiety; and in the end, a correlation analysis is designed to examine what correlations exist between the variables concerned and the three anxieties involved in language anxiety: communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation. The fifth part concerns itself with the discussion about the findings obtained from the present survey study. The sixth part draws the conclusion from the research, and points out the limitations and implications.The results of this study demonstrate that most of the Zhangye vocational school students are experiencing language anxiety at level, the anxiety influences vocational school students' language learning negatively, and the contributors of sex, birthplace, father's education degree are in significant correlation to English language anxiety while no significant correlation is present between the contributors of mother's education degree, family income and English language anxiety.