School Students’ Foreign Language Enjoyment,Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety And Their English Test Scores

Influenced by positive psychology,the field of SLA has witnessed growing interest in the positive emotion of foreign language enjoyment(FLE).FLE is often examined alongside foreign language classroom anxiety(FLCA).Assuming that identifying emotions that are more associated with foreign language achievement may provide opportunities to improve foreign language teaching,several studies have been conducted to compare the positive effect of FLE with the negative effect of FLCA on foreign language achievement and have yielded contrasting results,which make it hard to reach a conclusion that the former outweighs the latter.Besides,little is known about the comparison in Chinese junior middle schools.Additional research,therefore,is needed.The present study adopts the quantitative method to investigate the relationship between FLE,FLCA and English test scores among junior middle school students.Specifically,five questions are as follows:1)What are the levels of FLE and FLCA of the junior middle school students?2)What are the differences in FLE and FLCA between male and female students?3)What is the relationship between FLE and FLCA?4)What are the relationships between FLE/FLCA and English test scores?5)Which is the better predictor of the students‘ English test scores,FLCA or FLE?276 students from a junior middle school participate in the study,filling out the questionnaires.These quantitative data are analyzed by SPSS 22.0.The results are as follows:1)The mean value of FLE is 4.01.The high level of enjoyment means the students enjoy FL classes.Among the 3 dimensions of FLE,both the levels of FLETeacher(M = 4.53)and FLE-Peer(M = 4.18)are higher than the level of FLE-Private(M = 3.79),which means that the students‘ enjoyment comes more from their teachers and peers than themselves.The mean value of FLCA is 2.85,which means the students have a medium level of anxiety.2)Significant differences are only found in FLE,t(240)= 1.975,p =.049,and the female students(M = 4.08)experience more enjoyment in the FL class than the male students(M = 3.93).3)FLE is significantly,strongly and negatively correlated with FLCA(r =-.548,n = 242,p =.000),which means that students who have the high level of FLE will tend to have the low level of FLCA.4)FLE is significantly,moderately and positively correlated with English test scores(r =.34,n = 242,p =.000),and FLCA is significantly,moderately and negatively correlated with English test scores(r =-.38,n = 242,p =.000),showing that the students with higher English test scores will tend to have higher levels of FLE and lower levels of FLCA.FLCA is more strongly linked to English test scores than FLE,which indicates that the effect of FLCA on English test scores outweighs that of FLE.5)FLCA(beta =-.279,p =.000)predicts English test scores better than FLE(beta =.182,p =.010),which also indicates that the effect of FLCA on English test scores outweighs that of FLE.