A Study On Listening Anxiety And The Use Of Listening Strategy Of Senior One Students

In recent years, affective factors in language learning have attracted the attention of more and more researchers. Anxiety, as one of the important affective factors, is frequently discussed by various researchers. Through literature review, the author finds that most studies have focused on general foreign language anxiety, neglecting the dimension of language-skill specific anxieties. Therefore, this study, based on Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis and Constructive Learning Theory, with an empirical and systematical study of Senior One students in Funing Middle School, is undertaken to investigate the following three research questions:(1) What is the general level of listening anxiety experienced by Senior One students?(2) What is the general frequency of listening strategy employed by Senior One students?(3) Does listening anxiety influence the use of listening strategy? That is to say. is there any correlation between listening anxiety and the use of listening strategy? Is there any difference between high and low anxiety level groups in using listening strategy?Questionnaire survey was conducted in this the research. Subjects participating in the study were168Senior One students of three intact classes from Funing Middle School. Jiangsu Province. The two questionnaires employed were English Listening Anxiety Scale (ELAS) and English Listening Strategy Scale (ELSS). A series of data analysis methods were adopted in the study, including Reliability Analysis, Descriptive Analysis, Pearson Correlation Analysis and Two Independent Samples T-test.The major findings yielded from the study are summarized as follows:(1) Senior One students experience a comparatively high level of listening anxiety, the highest arising from lack of confidence while the lowest from perception difficulty.(2) Senior One students do not use listening strategy very often on the whole. They just employ it at a medium frequency level. However, the use of specific listening strategies does show some differences. Cognitive strategy is used the most often, socio-affective strategy just follows it and metacognitive strategy is used the least.(3) Listening anxiety does influence the use of listening strategy.First, there is a significantly negative correlation between listening anxiety and the use of listening strategy. Specifically speaking, the strongest correlation falls on the relationship between listening anxiety and the use of metacognitive strategy, followed by cognitive strategy and socio-affective strategy.Second, differences in using listening strategy are also found to exist between different anxiety level groups. High-anxiety students differ from Low-anxiety ones significantly in using both matacognitive and cognitive strategies.This study provides some pedagogical implications for both teachers and students.First. English teachers should try to help students face listening anxiety properly and adopt some proper teaching techniques to reduce their listening anxiety. Besides, teachers can train students to use listening strategy through explanation, practicing and evaluation.Second, students should learn to use listening strategy effectively through understanding, summarizing and reflection. In order to reduce listening anxiety, they can make some preparations before class, learn to employ effective strategies in class and do more exercises after class.This study has three limitations. First, the number of samples employed in this study may be not large enough to be generalizable to the whole population. Second, some other factors haven’t been considered due to the limitations of time and energy. Third, all the data are based on students’self-reports, so they may be not accurate enough due to some reasons.