A Study On The Relationship Between Speaking Anxiety And The Use Of Communication Strategies By Different English Proficiency Learners

Anxiety is a feeling of tension associated with a sense of threat of danger when thesource of the danger is unknown. It is described as a state of uneasiness and apprehension orfear caused by the anticipation of something threatening. With the development of thehumanistic psychology, linguistic researchers introduce the concept of anxiety into the studyof second language acquisition. And the concept of foreign language anxiety was first putforward by Horwitz in1986. Foreign language anxiety is considered as the feeling of tensionand apprehension specifically connected to second language contexts. In the process offoreign language learning, speaking is especially anxiety-prone. Speaking anxiety is thoughtas the speaker’s worry or fear in the course of communication with others. It will definitelybecome a handicap to an effective communication if the foreign language learner becomesanxious. Therefore, how to help foreign language learners overcome anxiety and to guaranteean effective communication is worth the researchers’ concern.The notion of communication strategies was firstly raised by Selinker in1972in hisseminal paper on interlanguage. Communication strategies are considered as thecompensative devices in communication due to the learners’ insufficient knowledge in thetarget language. The researchers have yielded fruitful research results in this field, rangingfrom the theoretical studies on the definition and classification of communication strategies tothe empirical researches involving its effectiveness, teachability and the affecting factors. Thefindings suggest that the use of communication strategies is affected by such factors aslanguage proficiency, gender and learning environment and so on. Does speaking anxietyaffect the use of it? It is worth exploring.Many researches about the foreign language anxiety and CS have been done. But theresearches of them are treated separately. The current study tries to combine the two issues,aiming to investigate the relationship between foreign language anxiety and their use ofcommunication strategies. Based on this, three research questions are raised:(1) Do thestudents at different language proficiency show different levels of speaking anxiety?(2) Dostudents with different language proficiency use CSs differently?(3) Is the students’ speakinganxiety related to their use of communication strategies? If it is, how are they related to eachother?300sophomores from LanZhou JiaoTong University are chosen as the subjects of thisstudy. The subjects are classified into three groups (high proficient group, medium proficientgroup and low proficient group) based on the criterion of CET-4score. Questionnaires andinterview are used as the research instruments. One-way ANOVA and the correlation analysishave been used after the data have been collected. The findings indicate that:(1) because of different language proficiency, the level of thelearners’ speaking anxiety show differently. The higher the learner’ proficiency is, the lowerthe speaking anxiety is, and vice versa.(2) The ability to use communication strategies isaffected by the learners’ proficiency. The high proficient learners have better ability to usecommunication strategies than the other groups.(3) A negative correlation between speakinganxiety and their ability to use communication strategies.The findings not only enrich the studies of foreign language anxiety and CSs but alsooffer the pedagogical implication for the foreign language teaching and learning, especiallyfor the language learners’ oral improvement. In language teaching, the training ofcommunication strategies is favorable to the learners. Meanwhile, the instructors shouldestablish a more relaxed leaning environment to lower the learners’ speaking anxiety.