Research Into The Features Of High School Students' English Listening Anxiety And Correlation Between Anxiety And Listening Performance

Language learning, especially foreign language learning, has been recognized as one of the most important issues in the applied linguistic field and attracted much attentions. As a complicated psychological process, foreign language learning is influenced by many factors including the cognitive variables as well as affective variables of individual learner.Learning anxiety, which is one of the important components of affective variables, can determine language learners' learning results and process to a large extent, as well as their cognition and emotions, especially for foreign language learners. However, the majority of the previous studies tend to focus on the general language anxiety while neglect the skill-specific anxiety such as listening anxiety and so on. Moreover, most of the studies select foreign language learners as participants while the explorations about Chinese English learning group is quite limited, especially for senior high school students. English listening is not only the foundation of English learning, but also the indispensable skill required in high school English learning process. As a result, the thesis will probe into the listening anxiety of Chinese senior high students in an effort to help alleviate the negative emotions in listening comprehension, thus facilitating the English listening teaching and learning.The study selects 52 senior high school students and 3 English teachers from Middle School Attached to Wuhan University as participants, in an effort to find out the reality of students' anxiety in English listening learning and examinations as well as the its effect upon listening achievements. The research methods of the study are composed of the questionnaires, students' self reports and interviews, of which the most important one is Kim's Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale. In detail, there are altogether four research questions:first, the general features and individual difference of senior high students' English listening anxiety; secondly, the existence of gender difference in listening anxiety degree and listening proficiency; thirdly, the possible causes leading to English listening anxiety; fourthly,the correlations between listening anxiety, listening proficiency and general English proficiency, and to what extent can anxiety influence listening achievements.The results indicates that the general level of senior high school students is at a medium level while there exists certain individual difference among students. Generally speaking, female listeners experience averagely lower degree of listening anxiety than males. However, the statistical data shows that there is no significant gender difference among listeners' anxiety degree as well as listening proficiency. The major causes of senior high school students' listening anxiety are the nature of listening material, the limitation of English proficiency, and the tension from losing points and failure. There is a significantly negative correlation between listening anxiety and listening proficiency, which indicates that the listener with higher anxiety is more likely to perform worse in listening comprehension. There is also significantly positive correlation between listening proficiency and general English proficiency. Besides, the study reveals that the negative correlation between female listeners' anxiety and listening proficiency is more obvious than that of males, which indicate that the negative effect of listening anxiety is more debilitating for females than for males.