An Empirical Study On The Relationships Among Science And Engineering University Students’ Psychological Capital,Foreign Language Anxiety And English Performance

With the rise and development of positive psychology,positive characteristics that contribute to individual’s success and happiness have been concerned.Inspired by positive psychology,Luthans,an American management scientist,put forward the concept of psychological capital,which contains four positive state factors of self-efficacy,optimism,hope and resilience.As an important tool for foreign language learners to effectively deal with various challenges and improve their English performance,psychological capital has been applied to the SLA field,but it has not received enough attention.The “problem orientation” composed of foreign language anxiety and other negative emotions is still the main research path in the SLA field.In addition,there are few studies focus on the correlations between language learners’ positive emotions and negative emotions.The research intends to explore the relationships among science and engineering university students’ psychological capital,foreign language anxiety and English performance.The participants of this study are 679 freshman and sophomore of non-English major students form a science and engineering university in Beijing.Quantitative method is employed in this study by using two well-established assessment questionnaires.The research questions are as follows: 1)What is the current situation of science and engineering university students’ psychological capital,foreign language anxiety and English performance? 2)What are the relationships among student’s psychological capital,foreign language anxiety and English performance? 3)Does psychological capital mediate the relationship between foreign language anxiety and English performance? If there is a mediating effect,what is the extent of the effect?The research results indicate:1)More than 50% of the participants possess moderate or high level of psychological capital.39.5% of the participants experience moderate or high level of foreign language anxiety.The overall situation of participants’ CET score is positive since 75.6% of them got 425 or above.2)Students’ psychological capital is significantly negatively correlated with foreign language anxiety.There is a positive but insignificant correlation between psychological capital and English performance.And foreign language anxiety is significantly negatively related to English performance.3)By employing bootstrapping method,the significant mediating effect of psychological capital on the relationship between foreign language anxiety and English performance is confirmed.The mediation analysis shows psychological capital has special suppression effect and the indirect effect accounts for 14.8% of the total effect.Based on the findings above,relevant suggestions are provided for teachers and students.As for teachers,they 1)need to assure themselves possess higher level of psychological capital and lower level of foreign language anxiety so as to be able to guide students to manage their emotions;2)need to be humorous and gentle to achieve a helpful and relaxing classroom atmosphere;3)need to employ some suitable teaching methods and activities to help students improve their psychological capital.As to students,they 1)can take full advantages of surroundings to alleviate foreign language anxiety when facing high level of it;2)can improve their psychological capital by using proper strategies.