A Research On Chinese Classroom Anxiety And Chinese Self-efficacy Of Foreign Preparatory Students In China

Since the 1960s, influenced by the development of humanistic psychology, the researching focus of foreign language teaching gradually shifted from "how to teach" to "how to learn." The researchers realized that the learner’s own factors, including physiological factors such as the learner’s emotional factors such as the learner’s personality, inhibition, self-confidence, anxiety, empathy and so on is a major factor in the success of second language acquisition. Anxiety and self-efficacy are important aspects of foreign language learners’ emotional factors, which influence each other.In recent years, the number of foreign preparatory students in China increased year by year, but the researches on learning anxiety and self-efficacy of this group are limited. This study is intended to investigate preparatory students’classroom anxiety and self-efficacy conditions, and the connections between the two factors.The subjects of the study are 2014 session of the Chinese Government Scholarship undergraduate foreign students in the International Institute of Education, Shandong University. Questionnaires and case interviews, combining the use of SPSS 19.0 to assess the questionnaire and analyze the data, reaches the foreign preparatory students’ Chinese classroom anxiety and self-efficacy conditions, and how learner’s individual factors, including gender, nationality and personality affect the results of the two, and the connections between the two factors.Research indicates:Chinese Classroom Anxiety aspects:The foreign preparatory students’ degree of Chinese classroom anxiety is a little high, but does not reach the theoretical moderate degree(99 points), and the individual difference is not great. The biggest causes of students’anxiety are examination pressure, Chinese characteristics and the low self-confidence when compared with other students. There are no significant difference among different, national origins or personalities. But the more extroverted the student is, the higher his/her negative evaluation anxiety is.The degree of classroom anxiety shows a significant negative correlation with the listening scores, reading scores and writing scores of HSK, which means the higher the degree of classroom anxiety is, the lower the score is, the lower the anxiety level is, the higher the score is, and vice versa.Chinese Self-efficacy aspects:Foreign preparatory students’ Chinese self-efficacy are generally high. Chinese general self-efficacy is higher than special self-efficacy. Among listening, speaking, reading and writing the four basic language skills, the highest is the reading self-efficacy, the hearing self-efficacy and writing self-efficacy follows, the speaking self-efficacy is the slowest.Preppies’ Chinese self-efficacy who share different personalities and nationalities did not differ significantly. But personality makes a significant difference in preppies’ speaking self-efficacy; the more extroverted personality the student is, the higher his/her speaking self-efficacy is, and vice versa.There is no significant difference between Chinese self-efficacy and students’ test scores.The connections between the two aspects:There is a significant negative correlation between Chinese classroom anxiety and Chinese self-efficacy, which means it can be considered that the higher the anxiety is, the lower the self-efficacy is, and vice versa. What is noteworthy is the influence is mutual.Chinese speaking self-efficacy has significantly predictive affect to classroom anxiety, communication anxiety and fear of negative evaluation anxiety.Case interviews share the similar results with the survey. Several suggestions are provided based on relevant theories.