A Study On Chinese Coliege EFL Learners’ Anxiety In Using English For Oral Communication

With the adjustments of College English Curriculum Requirements (CECR), the focus of college English teaching has shifted from the training of reading and writing skills to that of listening and speaking skills. The communicative function of English language is now attached much more importance in contemporary college English teaching. Anxiety, as an important affective factor which affects learning, has attracted great attention among researchers especially in the field of SLA. Quite a large number of studies have focused on anxiety in oral English both at home and abroad. However, most of these studies were conducted in the background of classroom. There have been few reports on empirical studies with the combination of anxiety and oral communication out of classroom. Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate the anxiety felt by the Chinese college EFL learners in their actual use of English for oral communication. Meanwhile, the factors inducing anxiety will be explored from the perspective of communicative competence.165non-English major sophomores from a key university in Nanchang participated in this study. They were of the similar age, educational background, life experiences as well as years of English learning. The study was conducted both quantitatively and qualitatively. Three instruments including questionnaire, interview and oral task were employed. All subjects were required to complete the modified scale and nine students with different levels of oral English proficiency were selected to take the interview. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS16.0Version. The study attempts to answer the following questions:1) What is the general state of Chinese college EFL learners’anxiety when they use English for oral communication?2) What is the correlation between the four aspects of communicative competence and oral English anxiety?3) What effects does anxiety have on students’ oral expression?The results of the study indicate that 1) Oral English anxiety does exist among Chinese college EFL learners. A majority of the subjects (48.1%) feel anxious at an average level,28.1%of the subjects experience a low level of anxiety and the rest23.8%are highly anxious.2) Four aspects of communicative competence (grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence) all play a role in leading to oral English anxiety. Among them, sociolinguistic competence and grammatical competence are the main factors. That is to say, the contextual elements and one’s grammatical knowledge account for a large part of the reasons causing anxious feelings,3) Anxiety has a significantly negative effect on the subjects’oral expression. The higher level of anxiety the subjects feel, the lower achievement they may get in the oral performance. But anxiety does not debilitate oral proficiency all the time. There is an inverted "U" shape relationship between language anxiety and oral performance.According to the research findings, some implications are put forward for both English teachers and EFL learners. Instructors are supposed to put more emphasis on the cultivation of students’oral communicative skills, especially their sociolinguistic competence. Students are suggested to be more confident in themselves and try to grasp every chance to practise speaking English in daily life. Besides, limitations of this study and future research suggestions are also pointed out. It is hoped that this study has offered some insight into future English teaching and learning.