An Empirical Study On English Listening Anxiety Of Non-English Majors

The affective factors play a vital role in the language learning. Andresclaimed that “If we want our students to develop their inherent potential to learn,the affective variables such as anxiety, motivation, self-esteem and inhibition canno longer be denied, the inner needs of the learners can no longer be neglected”(Andres,2002). Based on the theory of Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis, thestudy mainly explores the impact of anxiety in their listening.The aim of the present research is to investigate the present state ofnon-English-majors’ English listening anxiety in Chinese universities, to explorethe correlation between listening anxiety and listening proficiency, to investigatethe differences between male and female students in English listening anxiety, tofind out the differences between students taking the listening test and those nottaking the listening test in English listening anxiety and to examine the differencesbetween intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation in English listening anxiety.Based on the above five aims, the study selects184non-English-majorfreshmen from China University of Geosciences as the participants and employsboth quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze the data. The study adoptsdescriptive statistics, independent sample T-test and Pearson correlation analysisto analyze the collected data with the help of SPSS18.0. According to thecollected data and the result of the interview, the findings of the study are asfollows: First, listening anxiety is pervasive among Chinese students and hasbecome a common problem. Second, English listening anxiety and listeningproficiency show an obviously negative correlation. Third, there is an obviousdifference between listening anxiety and gender of students. Fourth, there is nosignificant correlation between listening anxiety and birthplaces of students.Finally, there is a marked difference between listening anxiety and motivations of students. The result of this study may provide some implications for Englishteachers in Chinese universities, especially facilitating teaching of non-Englishmajors listening class. As for the students, they should realize their own problems,and find an efficient way to deal with them.