A Study Of Foreign Language Anxiety Of College English Major Students In China

Foreign language learning is a complex learning process involving both cognitive and affective factors. One of the major affective factors, language anxiety, is a serious problem in foreign and second language classrooms. It is experienced by perhaps one third to one half of students. It exerts a negative influence on foreign language achievements as well as an all-around development of learners.The present traces the theoretical foundation of foreign language anxiety and gives a systematical description about the sources, development and negative effects of foreign language anxiety. It also presents three theories closely related to language anxiety on which this study is based.There are mainly two purposes in this study. The first one is to investigate the general tendency of language anxiety of English major students in China and examine the relationship between language anxiety and achievement. The second purpose is to differentiate the foreign language anxiety difference between college students from rural area and those from urban area.This study adopts a quantitative approach in designing the research. 150 English major students in their first grade in Jangxi Normal University were selected for the study. Students' language anxieties were obtained by using Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale. Scores on final examination were collected to access students' phrasal achievements. All data were processed with the help of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 12.0.The findings of this study show that foreign language anxiety of college English major students is at a warning level and indicate a negative correlation between foreign language anxiety and achievement. The relationship between factors of foreign language anxiety and achievement are also investigated. The most important finding of present study is that the social-cultural factors may exert a great influence on the...