A Study On Listening Anxiety And Coping Strategies Of Art Major Students In Senior High School

Researchers have paid much attention to learners' affective factors since 1970 s.In these years,researchers devoted themselves to studying the foreign language anxiety.It is a kind of complicated mental problem.However,researchers neglect the dimensions of language-skill specific anxieties,especially listening comprehension anxiety.Moreover,few studies choose art major senior students as their subjects.This study aims at art major senior students and studies their listening comprehension anxiety and the listening strategies to reduce it.As English proficiency is playing an important role in NMET,teachers should pay attention to the negative impact of English listening anxiety among the art major senior students.This study tries to investigate the listening anxiety of 120 art major senior students in Yinchuan Experimental Senior High School.It is about to find some practical ways on reducing the listening anxiety of art major senior students and improve their listening proficiency.The instruments are made up of an interview and three questionnaires: the Background Information Questionnaire,the Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale and the listening Strategies Scales.The three research questions addressed in this study are: 1.Do art major students in senior high school experience English listening anxiety? If so,what are they? 2.What is the correlation between the students' level of listening anxiety,listening proficiency and the use of listening strategies? 3.How do the art students use the listening strategies to improve their listening proficiency?The results in this study show that listening anxiety does exist in art major students of Yinchuan Experimental Senior High School.There are some negative relations between listening anxiety and listening proficiency and at the same time,there are some negative relations between listening strategy and listening anxiety.However,there are some positive relations between listening strategy and listening proficiency.As for listening strategies,students are likely to use cognitive strategies most frequently,and meta-cognitive strategies just follow cognitive strategies,while social-affective strategies are seldom used.Unsuccessful subjects have a little higher degree of listening comprehension anxiety than successful subjects.After the author have studied and analyzed the questionnaires and reflection of the interview,the factors of English anxiety will be revealed in this study.Some practical suggestions for the teachers and students are put forward in this study.They aim to reduce the listening anxiety of the art major senior students and improve their listening proficiency.Forteachers,they should consider that art major senior students do experience listening anxiety and need to help the students grasp listening strategies.In this way,the students would reduce listening anxiety and their listening proficiency would be improved.At the same time,teachers should try their best to create a relaxing atmosphere in listening class to reduce students' anxiety,arouse their interest in English and help them build confidence,train them to apply listening strategies to improve their proficiency.For the art major senior students,they should strengthen their basic knowledge of English and apply listening strategies,improve their English proficiency,and form a good habit of English listening.