Research On Learning Anxiety Of English Major Graduates

As a complicated mental phenomenon,anxiety is regarded as one of the most crucial affective variables of foreign language learning.In China,most previous studies of foreign language anxiety which center on undergraduate students as well as graduate students are made.However,few empirical researches on learning anxiety which take English major graduates as subjects can be found.This study was designed to explore learning anxiety among graduate students of English major and to find the potential sources of their learning anxiety.This study is conducted on the second-year and third-year graduate students from four different majors in Wuhan University of Technology,with a total number of 102 students.The research questions focused on three aspects:(1)Is the learning anxiety common among the second-year and third-year English major graduates of Wuhan University of Technology? What is the general picture of learning anxiety of them?(2)What is the relationship between learning anxiety and individual variables as different types,gender,personality ?(3)What is the relationship between learning anxiety and the distribution of each learning anxiety components? What is the relationship between learning anxiety and other potential factors?Methods of questionnaire and semi-structured interview were adopted to collect quantitative and qualitative data.In order to investigate the general picture of anxiety,scales were designed in the questionnaires.The related questions and symptoms of anxiety were discussed in the interviews.Meanwhile,data about gender,different types and personality were collected by both questionnaires and interviews.Findings of this study indicated that the learning anxiety was common among English major graduates of Wuhan University of Technology which is contrary to the expectation of the researcher and the findings of many recent studies.