An Empirical Study On Listening Anxiety Of English Majors

Second language acquisition has progressively stimulated people’s interest, andconsiderable progress has been made in this area since the1970s. The study onEnglish listening anxiety began in the1980s. And the research on listeningcomprehension strategies also commenced at the same time. Based on subjects’ oralreports, research shows that using different strategies leads to different languageproficiency. However studies have not arrived at an agreement because of the use ofdifferent instruments. Domestic studies started in the nineties, and they have earnedbigger advance in width and depth than the earlier researches.The object of this research is27students majoring in English at ShenyangNormal University. ELAS (English listening anxiety scale) and ELCS (Englishlistening comprehension strategies) are used to reveal the relationship between foreignlanguage listening anxiety, listening performance and listening comprehensionstrategies. Descriptive statistics, paired-samples T-test analysis, Pearson’s correlationanalysis and Cronbach’s alpha are used to analyze data.The result of this research shows that there is a negative relationship betweenlistening anxiety and listening performance, and listening strategies is positivelyrelated to listening performance.Based on the results of the research, it could be estimated that the listeningteachers have some limitations on listening teaching, so they should pay attention tolearners’ anxiety and give them some suggestions to help learners control their anxietyto improve the effectiveness of listening teaching.