A Survey Study On Facilitative Anxiety And Debilitative Anxiety In English Listening By Senior Three Students

The research was carried out to investigate Senior Three students' facilitative anxiety and debilitative anxiety in English listening.The theoretical foundations of the research are Affective Filter Hypothesis and Constructive Learning Theory.The significance of the research lies in two aspects:it not only supplements the research field on facilitative anxiety and debilitative anxiety particularly in listening but also provides some suggestions on English listening teaching and learning with the aim to increase the positive impact of facilitative anxiety while decrease the negative effect of debilitative anxiety for the sake of improving English listening proficiency.The research questions addressed in this study are as follows:1)What is the general state of facilitative anxiety and debilitative anxiety in English listening experienced by Senior Three students?2)Are there any differences in facilitative anxiety between high and low achievers and the differences in debilitative anxiety between high and low achievers?If yes,what are the differences?3)What is the relationship between facilitative anxiety and English listening proficiency and that between debilitative anxiety and English listening proficiency?Participants were 220 Senior Three students from four experimental classes in Jingjiang Senior High School in Jiangsu Province.The instruments include English listening proficiency tests,questionnaire and interview.English listening proficiency tests were implemented in order to measure students' English listening proficiency.The questionnaire was adopted from Kim's Alpert and Haber's(1960)Anxiety Achievement Test Scale(AATS)and Kim's(2000)Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale(FLLAS)with the whole internal reliability reaching.754.The questionnaires were handed out on December 20th,2017 and at last 204 questionnaires were regarded valid.Afterwards,a semi-structured interview was conducted with 8 students whose questionnaires were considered valid.Interviews were conducted in Chinese.The researchers recorded the entire process and then converted it into English for further researches.The data was processed by SPSS 21.0 with descriptive statistics analysis,independent-samples t test analysis and correlation analysis.This study yields the following major findings.Firstly,the general states of Senior Three students' facilitative anxiety(M=2.95),debilitative anxiety(M=2.73)in English listening are both at a relative low level with facilitative anxiety being higher than debilitative anxiety.With respect to the facilitative anxiety,the facilitative anxiety is more influenced by text characteristics(M=3.25),listening habits(M=3.08),nervousness in listening(M=3.07).As regards the debilitative anxiety,students' debilitative anxiety is more influenced by text characteristics(M=3.14)and listening habits(M=2.74).Secondly,there are significant differences in facilitative anxiety(p=.012<.05)and debilitative anxiety(p=.000<.05)between high and low achievers in general with low achievers having more debilitative anxiety but high achievers having more facilitative anxiety.When the micro-factors are examined,in the overall facilitative anxiety category,high achievers have more experience of facilitative anxiety than low achievers in the aspects of nervousness in listening(p=.035<.05)and text characteristics(p=.034<.05).With respect to the debilitative anxiety,there are significant differences between the two groups in all the four specific categories(p=.000<.05)with the differences in text characteristics being the biggest.Thirdly,there is no significant correlation between the facilitative anxiety and listening proficiency(r=0.002 with p=.975>.01)while the debilitative anxiety(r=-0.941**,p=.000)is significant negatively related with listening proficiency at the.01 level.Besides,when it comes to the correlation between micro-specific factors in facilitative anxiety group and listening proficiency,all factors in the facilitative anxiety group are uncorrelated with listening proficiency.What's more,all the four factors text characteristics(r=-0.845**,p=.000),nervousness in listening(r=-0.827**,p=.000),listening habits(r=-0.811**,p=.000)and self-evaluation(r=-0.598**,p=.000)are negatively related with listening proficiency with the correlation between text characteristics and listening proficiency(r=-0.845**,p=.000)being the strongest.The research provides some implications.Firstly,both teachers and students should realize the importance of listening anxiety and try to increase the positive impact of facilitative anxiety but decrease negative effect of debilitative anxiety in English listening.Secondly,teachers should take proficiency differences into consideration and make different teaching arrangements accordingly.Especially for those low achievers with the highest debilitative anxiety,teachers should help them adapt to different degrees of difficulty in listening material and help them form good listening habits.Thirdly,much attention should be paid to improve the four aspects of listening habits,nervousness in listening,self-evaluation and text characteristics in English listening so as to lessen the negative impact of debilitative anxiety while increase the positive influence of facilitative anxiety.There are also limitations in the research:The sample size is not large enough to generalize the research results to more groups.Besides,the causes of listening anxiety(including the facilitative anxiety and the debilitative anxiety)are only explored from four aspects,which may give rise to unsuccessful description of senior three students'facilitative anxiety and debilitative anxiety in English listening.