The Factor Composition Of Test Anxiety And Its Relationship With High School Students' English Listening Performance

Test anxiety is a part of situational anxiety,which is based on emotional factors related to specific situations and events.Horwitz(2001)defined test anxiety as anxiety about academic evaluation and fear of failure.In the study of test anxiety,there are single component,double component and multi-component point of view,and the results of the study on whether test anxiety has influence on students' listening test results are also inconsistent.Previous studies have mostly focused on high-level English learners such as college students,while middle school students,especially high school students,are less involved.In addition,the questionnaire items used by the measurement tools are less,which can not reflect the basic state of test anxiety.Therefore,this study aims to explore the factors of test anxiety and its influence on high school students' English listening performance by using two kinds of test anxiety scales to enrich the content of test anxiety and to verify the relationship between test anxiety and English listening achievement.The specific research questions include: 1)what are the main components of test anxiety? 2)what is the degree of the students' test anxiety? Is there a difference between male and female students? 3)what is the relationship between test anxiety and listening achievement? Is this relationship influenced by the type of listening task? Are there any differences between boys and girls?The author used convenience sampling to study 250 senior middle school students in Dezhou No.1 Middle School.The data were collected by questionnaire and listening test.The questionnaires included TAS(Test Anxiety Scale,Sarason 1975)and TII(Test Influence Inventory,Fujii 1993).The content of listening test is extracted from the national college entrance examination paper.A total of 200 valid questionnaires and 200 listening test scores were collected for statistical analysis.Data analysis uses SPSS23.0,and Amos24.0 to model the structure equation.The main contents of the analysis include normality test,exploratory factor analysis,confirmatory factor analysis and so on.The results show that: 1)Test anxiety consists of three factors: general test anxiety,self-response and anxiety fatigue;2)50% of the subjects showed moderate anxiety,25% of the subjects showed low and high anxiety,and there was a gender difference between male and female students,and the effect of the difference was moderate;3)Test anxiety had no significant effect on the listening achievement of the subjects,and the relationship between the test anxiety and the listening achievement was not affected by the type of listening task and the sex of the subjects,but the study found that the anxiety degree of the high score was lower than that of the low score.This study has enlightening significance.Theoretically,the factor composition of test anxiety confirms the three-component view of the study of test anxiety(Friedman & Jacob1997;Wren 2004).There is no significant correlation between test anxiety and listening scores.It also supports the views of Aida(1994)and MacIcntyre & Gardner(1989).However,this study found that the anxiety of the low score group was higher than that of the high score group,which also indicated that the test anxiety would affect the listening test scores.In practice,schools can carry out various psychological adjustment activities in case that the anxiety of the students is so high that they affect their study and examination.and timely help students overcome test anxiety through intervention.Teachers should actively understand students' anxiety and actively mediate students' anxiety;students should learn to maintain a positive attitude and cope with theexamination with a relatively relaxed mood.