A Study On The Relationship Between English Listening Anxiety And Perceptual Learning Styles Of Senior High School Students

The present research, based on Krashen's affective filter hypothesis and Reid's perceptual learning style modality, aims at finding out whether there is a significant correlation between Chinese senior high school students' perceptual learning style preferences and English listening anxiety they had experienced. The study mainly focuses on four aspects: identifying the degree of listening anxiety the senior high school students had experienced and their perceptual learning style preferences; exploring the relationship between one's perceptual learning style preferences and his/her listening anxiety; and finding out whether there is a predictive power of learners' preferred perceptual learning style preferences for the degree of listening anxiety.The participants selected for the study are a whole class of 64 senior high school students in Grade One of Hongya Middle School. Translated versions of the following two questionnaires, Reid's Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire (PLSPQ) and Kim's Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale (FLLAS), are administered to assess students' perceptual learning style preferences and listening anxiety. The data are typed into SPSS for data analysis. A series of data analysis methods is adopted in the study: Pearson Correlation is used to examine the strength of relationship between the two variables. Multiple regression analysis is adopted to determine the influence of learning style preferences on English listening anxiety.The result of the present study reveals that English listening anxiety is pervasive in senior high school students but it is not serious. There is a general tendency of the senior high school students' learning style preferences towards the kinesthetic learning style. And then, it is followed by tactile, individual, group, auditory and visual learning styles. And there is a relationship between perceptual learning style preferences and listening anxiety. Specifically, there is a significant positive correlation between the scores of the visual learning style and listening anxiety, and a significant negative relationship between the auditory style, as well as the individual style, and listening anxiety. Moreover, the auditory style and individual style are found to have a negative influence on English listening anxiety. And it is also found that some students have more than one major learning style and some had no major style.The findings of the study contribute to both theoretic system and English teaching. The review of literature reveals that there is no study on the topic, so the research can open a new field of EFL researches. For teachers, it is suggested that they should notice the relationship between learners' perceptual learning style preferences and listening anxiety, and help students to alleviate the anxiety by various ways such as extending their learning styles and using learning strategies etc.Further researches are also needed to explore the relationship between learning styles of other categories and language-skill-related anxiety. And the number of one's major learning styles still needs more researches.