High School Students In English Learning Anxiety And Endogenous Factors Influencing

The present paper reports the findings of a survey on students' English learning anxiety and the relation between English learning anxiety and endogenous factors. The survey is conducted among 516 middle school students by means of questionnaire and private interviews. Based on the analysis, the author has come to the following conclusion:1. The Chinese learning anxiety scale compiled from the research has relatively reliability and validity. It can well reflect the situation of English learning anxiety of middle school students.2. The general level of English learning anxiety of Chinese middle school students is not very high. Among all the factors, the students obtain higher scores in communication apprehension and fear of negative evaluation.The gender factor make significant difference in English learning anxiety, while there is no significant difference among schools or grades. The students of senior 2 have higher English learning anxiety than the students of other grades. Female's English learning anxiety is lower than the male's.3. The students' English learning anxiety is significantly negatively correlated with learning achievement. Those who have higher English learning anxiety often make worse English achievement, while those who have lower English learning anxiety often make better English achievement.4. The scores of English learning anxiety are significantly negatively correlated with scores of self-efficacy in English learning, deep motivation, second language tolerance of ambiguity, and they are significantly positively correlated with scores of negative attribution, achievement motivation. They are insignificantly negatively correlated with positive attribution, surface motivation.Conception of endogenous factors can well explain the variation in English learning anxiety (to a degree of 68.8%). However, different factors have an influence in varying degrees. The degrees of effect vary from highest to lowest are: self-efficacy in English learning, second language tolerance of ambiguity, negative attribution, achievement motivation. Apart from that, positive attribution, surface motivation and deep motivation have unremarkably direct influence on learning anxiety, but they exert indirect impact on English learning anxiety through other factors.5. we have found the phenomenon of senior 2, that is, among all the six grades( from junior 1 to senior 3), the students of senior 2 obtain the highest scores of English learning anxiety, lowest scores of self-efficacy in English learning, lowest scores of English deep motivation and highest scores of English negative attribution. Whether the phenomenon is popular demands further research.