The Effect Of Anxiety On Listening Proficiency Of Vocational College Students

Horwitz defines anxiety as a "subjective feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness, and worry associated with an arousal of the autonomic nervous system". Recently, the scholars at home or broad have been putting more and more attention to this one of the affect factors. Many researchers then paid attention to the study of foreign language anxiety (FLA), which was a complicated mental phenomenon specific to language learning and was defined as a distinct complex of apprehension arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process. In these years, researchers further their investigation on anxiety into the specific language skills, such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. Among the abroad researches on anxiety produced in the process of specific language skills acquisition, most of the researches were focused on the relationship between anxiety and speaking, but to listening, especially to the effect of anxiety on the listening proficiency of vocational college students, is relatively limited.In addition, researchers disagree on the effect of foreign language anxiety on foreign language learning. Some researchers thought that anxiety was beneficial to foreign language learning to some extent, but others did not hold the same opinion. Omaggio Hadley, Terrell, Krashen and Rardin did not think that anxiety could be beneficial to foreign language learning, because although certain degree of tension is good to foreign language learning, the certain degree of tension is "attention" but not "anxiety". Some researches proved the existence of facilitating anxiety which can promote language learning, but most of the researches focused on the debilitating anxiety which could hinder language learning. This thesis also talks about debilitating anxiety.This thesis aims to address the following research questions:1.Do vocational college non-English majors experience foreign language listening anxiety?2. What's the relationship between foreign language anxiety and foreign language listening proficiency?3. What are the potential sources of English listening anxiety?To resolve the above three questions, the author analyzed the collected data by adopting both quantitative and qualitative methods. First, Horwitz's Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale was used to test students'foreign language classroom anxiety. And then English Listening Anxiety Scale modified by the author with the reference to some related scales is adopted in this research. Based on the English Listening Anxiety Scale, the research was carried out among the non English majors in Hunan Engineering Polytechnic to obtain the data. FLCAS was used to measure students'general English classroom anxiety, and the ELAS was used to measure the specific listening anxiety. After comparing the results of the two questionnaires, it can make sure whether listening anxiety level is higher than the general English classroom anxiety or not. Two classes were randomly selected as the subjects. Both the experimental class and controlled class were asked to finish FLCAS, ELAS and Background Information Questionnaire right after they do the first listening in-class examination. One week later, they took another listening test. Before the test, the experimental class was told that the result of this test would be taken into their final examination's score, taking up 30%. After finishing the listening test, another ELAS was filled only by the experimental class. The second time test results were compared with both the results the first time and with the results of controlled class. The comparison between the experimental class and the controlled class tends to prove whether the change of students'proficiency is due to the change of students'listening anxiety or due to the change of difficult level of listening test. Based on the ELAS and SPSS, analysis was carried out about the correlations between relevant factors. According to the result of quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis, the following conclusions can be drawn:Firstly, the students in vocational college suffer from anxiety, in English listening. Secondly, there exists a negative correlation between listening anxiety and listening proficiency when the students are in the high pressure situation. Finally, according to the factor analysis of ELAS, four kinds of potential sources of listening anxiety are found.To conclude, English listening anxiety does widely exist in English learning, which requires teachers to put attention to it. Teachers could use the following ways to reduce the debilitating effect of anxiety on students'listening proficiency, such as emphasizing skills, inducing learners'interest, developing good listening strategies and cultivating learners'self-confidence.