A Study On Listening Comprehension Anxiety Among Art Major College Students

In recent years, with the increase of the emphasis on individual difference in thearea of Second Language Acquisition，more and more researchers and educators havefocused their attention on the effects of learners’ affective factors on languagelearning. Among these affective factors, anxiety, as one of the basic human’semotions, has drawn more and more researchers’ attention in the field of SecondLanguage Acquisition. A large number of previous researches have confirmed thatforeign language anxiety has significantly negative influence on the languagelearning process and it is one of the best predictors for individual difference inlanguage learning. It is well-known that listening comprehension is deemed as “acomplex, dynamic and fragile process”. Among the four foreign language learningskills, listening might be the most anxiety-provoking and problematic element forforeign language learners. However, studies at home and abroad mostly have focusedon the general language anxiety but ignored such language-skill-specific anxiety aslistening anxiety, speaking anxiety and etc. With regards to language-skill-specificanxiety, the researches on listening anxiety are comparatively limited. Apart fromthat, these scarce researches on listening anxiety directed their attention to theEnglish/non-English majors in general colleges or universities. There is a vacancy ofstudy on listening anxiety among art major college students who are publiclyregarded as the low English proficiency students in university.Owing to the implementation of “Expanding Recruitment” policy and the lowrequirement of art major students’ academic performance in the National CollegeEntrance Examination, more and more art major students flood into the university campus and the number of art major students in university increases sharply.Compared with other non-English major college students in university, art majorcollege students are weaker in English knowledge and poorer in accumulation ofEnglish grammar and vocabulary. They admitted having been afraid of attendingEnglish class since middle school. Through the teaching observation, it is found thatart major college students often feel nervous and irritated in the process of Englishlistening. This situation demonstrates the necessity of targeting at art major collegestudents in this study. This study is conducted to investigate art major collegestudents listening anxiety state and explore their listening anxiety sources. Besides, itis expected to find out some theoretical and practical suggestions on alleviating artmajor college students’ listening anxiety and improving their listening proficiency.Based on such background, the present thesis is conducted for the followingpurposes: Firstly, it attempts to increase our understanding about the state of Englishlistening comprehension anxiety among art major college students in Xi’anPolytechnic University. Secondly, it aims at investigating the correlations betweenlistening comprehension anxiety and listening proficiency. Thirdly, it is to test therelationship between listening anxiety and listeners’ background information.Fourthly, it is to examine the differences of listening anxiety between differentgroups of subjects. Fifthly，it intends to explore the potential sources of listeninganxiety among art major college students.The present study employs two instruments including questionnaires of196subjects and an interview of12subjects from Xi’an Polytechnic University. Thequestionnaires include the learners’ Background Information Questionnaire (BIQ)and Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale (FLLAS).The study utilizes such dataanalysis methods as Descriptive Analysis, Pearson Correlation Analysis andIndependent Samples T-test with the assistance of SPSS17.0to analyze the datacollected from the subjects. The study reveals that (1) Listening comprehensionanxiety does pervade among art major college students in Xi’an PolytechnicUniversity. All subjects in this study experience listening anxiety and most of themundergo the intermediate and high levels of anxiety.(2) There exists a significantlynegative correlation between subjects’ listening anxiety and their listeningproficiency, namely, the higher the subject’s listening anxiety is, the lower theirlistening proficiency is. Besides, subjects’ listening anxiety negatively correlates with such background factors as (a) average time spent in extracurricular listening trainingeveryday;(b) self-reported listening proficiency and (c) interest in English listening.(3) There is no obvious difference in listening anxiety level between male and femalesubjects, but the female subjects’ listening proficiency is higher than that of malesubjects. In addition, subjects from countryside experience more anxiety in listeningcomprehension than those from city and the listening proficiency of subjects fromcountryside is also weaker than their counterparts from city. Moreover, there exists asignificant difference between effective and ineffective listeners in terms of listeninganxiety, and high anxiety listeners’ listening proficiency is poorer than that of lowanxiety listeners.(4) There also appear some differences between high-anxiety groupand low-anxiety group in terms of subjects’ following background factors:(a)Average time spent in extracurricular listening training everyday. The subjects inhigh-anxiety group put in less time in listening training than those in low-anxietygroup.(b) Self-reported listening proficiency. Those subjects who belong tohigh-anxiety group perceive having lower listening proficiency.(c) Self-reportedlistening anxiety level. The subjects in each group can correctly predict theirlistening anxiety level and they’ve realized this problem.(d) Interest in Englishlistening. Subjects in high-anxiety group report to have less interest in Englishlistening than their counterparts.(e) The interview with12participants identifiesthree major sources of listening anxiety which are characteristics of the listeningmaterial, personal characteristics and characteristics of listening comprehension,particularly, the lack of vocabulary and background information in the aspect of thelistening material characteristics are regarded as the key factors of subjects’ highanxiety.In the light of the pervasiveness of foreign language listening anxiety among artmajor college students, the research gives some pedagogical implications for teachersto help art major college students alleviate their listening anxiety and promote theirlistening proficiency. Owing to the limitations of the study, the author also givessome suggestions for the further study in this field.