The Influence Of Foreign Language Anxiety On Listening Proficiency

Since the1970s, researchers began to pay attention to affective factors in language learning. However, most of them focused on foreign language anxiety as a whole, neglecting the anxiety investigation of specific language skill. Listening is a basic language skill as well as a difficult one. Listening anxiety is an obvious psychological phenomenon in the listening process, which is, therefore, worth research as an anxiety-related listening obstacle.This thesis is to study the influence of listening anxiety on listening proficiency through both qualitative and quantitative methods. The subjects are108non-English majors from East China University of Science and Technology,36female students and72male students. The instruments include listening anxiety questionnaire, listening strategy questionnaire, CET4model test, classroom observation and interview of8students. The questionnaires are in Chinese in order to ensure accurate understanding. All the data are analyzed with SPSS (Statistic Package of Social Science)19.0for Windows. Item analysis, descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation analysis, Independent-samples T-test analysis were performed during the study.The result of the survey shows that students are influenced by certain anxiety during listening process. And there exists a significant negative correlation between listening anxiety and listening proficiency. Meanwhile, the application of listening strategy also negatively relates to listening anxiety. There is no apparent difference between anxiety experienced by male students and female students, and low score groups experience more anxiety than high score groups do. Furthermore, through classroom observation and interview, the author has collected and analyzed learners’view towards listening anxiety and their frequently used strategies.This thesis enriches current listening researches of non-English majors, and provides pedagogical instructions to listening class. The joint efforts are indispensable to reduce negative effect brought about by listening anxiety.