A Study On English-majors' Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Within The Framework Of Dynamic Systems Theory

SLA scholars gradually broaden the scope of research to include language learner factors into discussion since it gradually stood as an independent discipline in the 1960 s.Labov(1966)focused on the heterogeneity in language learning and certified that social class played an important role in language use.After that,SLA scholars gradually shifted their research focus to learners' individual differences.Dulay and Burt(1977)proposed “affective filter” to analyze the influence of learners' affective factors upon their language learning initially.Later,scholars began to study on language learners' affective factors from more dimensions and at different depths.Among all affective factors,anxiety is widely acknowledged as one of the most important variables that lead to learners' individual differences.By 1986,Elaine K.Horwitz,Michael B.Horwitz and Joann Cope proposed Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety(FLCA)for the first time.Then,scholars at home and abroad have done a lot of researches on FLCA,covering a wide range of topics such as listening,speaking,reading and writing and from the perspective of two dimensions including input and output.Although these researches have made great achievements,they still confined themselves to the traditional reductionist approach,simply treated the causes of FLCA as independent and separate factors in the linear cause-and-effect linkage.In 1997,American linguist Larsen-Freeman applied the Dynamic Systems Theory(DST)into SLA studies for the first time,and thus provided a new perspective and theoretical foundation for studies on SLA and on learners' individual differences.In this context,taking DST as the theoretical framework,following the idiodynamic method,this thesis will conduct an empirical research and analyze five sophomores' FLCA in five classroom activities including listening,speaking,reading,writing and translating by means of scales(including FLCAS and STAI),classroom video and observation,stimulated recall,Anion Variable Tester software as well as interviews.The current research has been conducted among English-major sophomores of a college in Shandong Province and has chosen 5 sophomores as subjects.Results indicate that there is a dynamic development of students' FLCA when they are doing different class activities.When students perform the listening and speaking activities,their communication apprehension has mainly dominated the entire system of FLCA;when they perform the reading and translating activities,their fear of negative evaluation has mainly controlled the development of their FLCA;and when they perform the writing activity,their test-anxiety has become the major attractor when their FLCA increased during the whole activity.Thus,the entire FLCA system varies with the change of the dominating sub-systems which have in turn affected by different class activities.Meanwhile,when performing the same activity,different subjects experience different FLCA because of their individual differences,like motivations,learning styles,personalities,etc.or their different initial states of FLCA at the beginning of each class activity.And the current research has once again indicated that DST has an advantage of FLCA researches both theoretically and methodologically.