College Students’ Foreign Language Anxiety And Willingness To Communicate From The Perspective Of Flipped Classroom

Technological innovation and the rapid development of intelligent technology have injected new vitality to the reform of higher foreign language education.A new teaching approach,flipped classroom model(FCM)is student-centered and emphasizes learners’ behavioral and emotional changes in the teaching process.Affective factors such as foreign language anxiety(FLA)and willingness to communicate(WTC)have profound impact on the process and outcomes of college students’ foreign language learning.WTC would be influenced by FLA,which would also influence language learning.Some scholars conducted the studies on the individual differences,correlation and influencing factors of the WTC in traditional teaching model.Meanwhile,others explored the fields regarding the ontological,comprehensive,applied,correlational,impact factors and experimental teaching of FLA,which produced fruitful results.However,college students’ FLA,WTC and their self-rated English proficiency are worth studying further under the FCM.Based on Krashen’s affective filter hypothesis(1985)and Wen & Clement’s Model of L2 WTC(2003),this study mainly attempted to explore college students’ WTC,FLA under the FCM with 213 non-English majors of Guangxi University by quantitative and qualitative approaches,aiming to examine the correlations,impact factors and predictors of the WTC,FLA and self-rated English proficiency,so as to provide practical evidence and pedagogical implications for alleviating students’ FLA,increasing their WTC and enhancing their foreign language learning.The results show that:(1)More than half of the students were unwilling to participate in interpersonal conversations under the FCM.Students were moderately sociable and held positive attitudes towards speaking with others in English class.However,maybe due to anxiety,lack of self-confidence,face-saving or fear of negative evaluation,many of them did not like to risk using or speaking English in class.(2)Most students felt moderately or highly anxious in English class.Under the FCM,students’ test anxiety was in high level.The increasing number of the language exercises and tests resulted in students’ increase of test anxiety.(3)Students’ WTC had a moderately negative correlation with their FLA.The lower the students’ WTC was,the more anxious they felt.In other words,students who reported experiencing more anxiety on communication and negative evaluation in their English class also expressed less WTC.Meanwhile,students who were unwilling to participate in group discussions,with low WTC,were more fearful of being negatively evaluated,more apprehensive of communication in English,less risk-taking and sociable in English class under the FCM.(4)Students’ self-rated English proficiency was positively correlated with their WTC but negatively correlated with their FLA.Specifically,those with lower self-rated English proficiency expressed less WTC and experienced more FLA.Besides,the more risk-taking or sociable a student was in class,the higher his or her self-reported ratings of proficiency was in English reading,listening,writing and speaking.Among the four English skills,self-rated English speaking ability showed a significant correlation with both WTC and FLA.To conclude,with the purpose of improving students’ WTC,reducing their FLA and promoting their foreign language learning under the FCM,this study put forward some pedagogical implications:(1)Constructing a flexible and professional development platform for FC instructors;(2)Creating a positive and responsible classroom atmosphere;(3)Establishing a supportive affective space.