A Study Of Contemporary Undergraduates’ Foreign Language Anxiety Based On Social Constructivist Model

Since the1980s, with the development of pedagogy and educational psychology, scholars and researchers have changed their language teaching and research focus from teaching to learning. Among factors concerning learning, learners’affective factors have been paid much attention to. Many studies have come to an agreement on the relationship between affective variables and foreign language learning. Researchers agree that learners’affective factors could easily affect their language learning. Of all affective factors, learners’language anxiety is considered to be one of the most crucial affective factors. Much language anxiety would influence learners’ mental state, cause harmful effects to their language learning, and impede their normal language learning. Under traditional teaching model, the teacher is in a dominant position while students just passively receive some ready-made and factual knowledge from the teacher. Such a teaching model, in the author’s mind, would bring much language anxiety to language learners.To help improve the teaching model, the author did a research on contemporary undergraduates’language anxiety based on social constructivist model by associating language anxiety with social constructivist model, attempting to see whether social constructivist teaching and learning model could have a positive impact on the effective control of learners’language anxiety in their learning process. Based on the characteristics of contemporary undergraduates, the author proposed the following research questions:①What is the current language anxiety state of contemporary undergraduates?②What are the effects of language anxiety on contemporary undergraduates’ language learning performance and achievement?③What are the problems caused by their language anxiety?④What is the difference between science majors and liberal arts majors in their language anxiety state and source? The final aim was to see whether contemporary undergraduates’ language anxiety could be reduced and controlled effectively under social constructivist model.The research was carried out among120non-English majors in Chengdu University of Technology. In the research, the author used two questionnaires. The first questionnaire was the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) designed by Horwitz, and the second was designed by the author himself. After collecting the research data, the author made a data analysis through the statistical software SPSS. The results show foreign language anxiety is a common phenomenon in contemporary undergraduates, and much language anxiety is experienced by a large number of undergraduates in some aspects of language learning; contemporary undergraduates’ language anxiety state and the situation are serious and not optimistic; undergraduates’ language anxiety has a negative correlation with their language learning performance and achievement and has impeded their normal language learning to a great degree; there are many obvious problems caused by their language anxiety, such as tension and frustration in the classroom, communicative apprehension, difficulty in oral English, test anxiety, fear of others’negative evaluation, and so on. Regarding the difference between science majors and liberal arts majors in their language anxiety state and source, the results show science majors have more language anxiety than liberal arts majors in their language learning process, and are more likely to have language anxiety in some aspects like Personal Anxiety, Test Anxiety, and Learner’s Beliefs. As to the new teaching and learning methods advocated by social constructivist model, most research subjects strongly agree and think highly of them.Based on the results and findings of the research, the author comes to the conclusion that much language anxiety is experienced by lots of contemporary undergraduates. Social constructivist model indeed has an effective control over students’ language anxiety and helps to reduce students’language anxiety level, which will be beneficial to both language teachers’teaching and learners’language learning. Through this research, the author hopes to provide some implications on the improvement of future domestic foreign language teaching and learning quality and efficiency.