A Case Study Of Correlation Between English Learners' Anxiety And Their Oral Performance In The Language Classroom

With the development of Chinese economy,an increasing number of enterprises have been involved in international business competition.As globalization is an inevitable trend,one of the significant tasks of higher education is the training of international talents who are capable of using English,the global language,in their study,work and communication with people from different cultures.Sino-foreign cooperatively-run teaching programs aim at equipping students with professional expertise and English proficiency so that they can adapt themselves to the fierce competition and make full preparations for their further education abroad or future career.Students' English proficiency,especially their oral English,plays a vital role in their future development.The research is a case study of the correlation between English learners' anxiety and their oral performance in the language classroom.The subjects of the research come from Sino-Australia cooperatively-run teaching program,namely,the cooperation between Jiangsu Institute of Education and Southern Cross University from Australia.The author of this research paper offers the following hypothesis: Students from SFCRP experience certain FL learning anxiety.The researcher first conducted the questionnaire of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scales among over 120 non-English majors in China-Australia cooperatively-run program from Jiangsu Institute of Education.These students major in Hotel Management -Tourism Management,Logistics Management and Marketing.Later another semi-structured email interview about students' experiences as well as anxieties they have encountered in language learning was carried out.FLCAS results indicate that the students do experience certain English learning anxiety.Compared with their oral test scores from the official school grade reports,SPSS software shows that there is a negative correlation between their foreign language learning anxiety and their oral performance.From the analysis of the email interview,students attribute the English learning anxiety to the following sources:few practice chance;unfamiliarity with the western culture,especially with the English speaking country;poor English proficiency in their high schools etc.