An Investigation Of The Language-skill-specific Anxiety Among Non-English Major Students In China

Since the 1980s, the focus of second language acquisition has shifted from the way that teachers teach to the way that learners learn. It is more and more realized that the success of second language acquisition depends largely on the learner him/herself. Affective factors are considered one of the two major factors that influence second/foreign language acquisition, among which anxiety is the most important one.The research on foreign language anxiety can be roughly divided into two stages: the early stage from the 1940s' to 1985 and the later stage from 1986 to the present. The research studies on foreign language anxiety before 1986 were scattered and inconclusive. In 1986, the publishing of the article of "Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety" by Horwitz et al. (1986) marked a milestone in the foreign language anxiety research and laid down a theoretical foundation for the later development in that field. Since then the research on foreign language anxiety has manifested itself in two trends. The first trend interprets and analyzes foreign language anxiety as a whole, which studies anxiety as it relates to the overall performance of the subjects and other variables affecting foreign language learning, with Howitz, Maclntyre, Gardner and Young being the representatives. The other trend in the studies of language anxiety is the language-skill-specific anxiety, which divides and analyzes language anxiety as it relates specifically to the four language skills, namely speaking, listening, writing and reading, with Cheng, Saito, Vogely and Kim being the representatives. However the studies on language anxiety in China lag far behind those in the western countries both in theories and practice. Few studies have been conducted about students' exact experiences of the language-skill-specific anxiety. It is owing to this that the author studies the language-skill-specific anxiety of the Chinese non-English major students.This research is designed to determine the anxiety levels of the four English skills among the Chinese non-English major students learning English as a foreign language and further to explore the sources of their language-skill-specific anxiety. Both quantitative and qualitative research approaches are employed. The 112 subjects are non-English sophomores from four regular classes at China University of...