A Study On The Correlation Between English Listening Anxiety And Proficiency Of College Students

Listening,as an important form of input for language learning,is closely related to the success of language learning.The Ministry of Education took it seriously and promulgated “A Guide to College English Teaching”(2015)to make higher application requirements as to the English listening ability of college students.In addition,on-line plus offline teaching mode is widely employed in listening instruction with great convenience and benefits,but there are still challenging phenomena of poor supervision from teachers and inaction from students.Since 2015,colleges and universities gradually do not attach certificates to the grades of CET-4,and data from CET-4 witnesses downtrend in college non-English major students’ listening proficiency in recent years.By reviewing the literatures,a significantly negative correlation can always be found between listening anxiety and proficiency.For example,Chen Yanjun(2010)finds the higher the learner’s anxiety value is,the lower the listening score is,and vice versa.So it’s supposed that the downtrend in college non-English major students’ listening proficiency might be related with the high level of their listening anxiety.Also by means of empirical study,researchers such as Warr.P & Downing.J(2011),Jia Xiaoyang(2013),Chen Xiaolin(2015)find that the instruction of English listening learning strategies will facilitate the improvement of English learners’ listening proficiency,enhance their confidence and indirectly reduce anxiety.Targeting at the new challenge and new trend,the researcher thinks it necessary to probe into the correlation between listening anxiety and proficiency again,and experiment the effectiveness of the instruction of listening learning strategies on students’ listening proficiency and anxiety,in the hope that the research can enlighten and give a hand to the instruction of English listening.With that,the present research,under the guidance of Input Hypothesis,Affective Filter Hypothesis and Attribution Theory,tries to pursue the answers to the research questions.119 sophomores,majoring in energy and power engineering and animal science in Yulin University are randomly chosen as the subjects,with the former being experimental group and the latter contrast group.First,CET-4 listening test and FLLAS are carried out to detect subjects about their listening anxiety condition,listening proficiency status and the correlation between them by Spss 17.0.Then,the mode of English listening learning strategies instruction from Su Yuanlian(2003)is adopted to train subjects in the experimental group for 14 class periods.After finishing the instruction,both groups are required to take another CET-4 listening test and fill out an LSS questionnaire.Six subjects,are randomly selected according to their performance in pretest and posttest as interviewees to answer structured in-depth questions.Last,quantitative data from the questionnaires and tests are used for analysis and discussion by means of Spss17.0.Three kinds of analyses are done,among which are descriptive statistics,independent samples T test,and Pearson correlation test.Interview as an important qualitative instrument is combined with previous quantitative analysis.Under the help of the above design,the present research obtains several major findings: 1)generally,college non-English major students experience a certain degree of medium listening anxiety.There are no siginificant differences in different classes and different genders,but females experience much higher anxiety from lacking of confidence than males.2)non-English major college students are at a low level of listening proficiency.Females do much better in listening than males.The worse is that students’ listening proficiency is weakening year by year.3)in general,the subjects’ English listening anxiety are positively correlated with their listening proficiency,but no significant correlations are found.In addition,low and medium levels of anxiety are positively correlated with the subjects’ listening proficiency,however there are also no significant correlations between them.4)the instruction of English listening learning strategies can not only improve the subjects’ use frequency of these strategies effectively,but also promote their listening proficiency to a large extent.Additionally,males use more cognitive and metacognitive strategies,while females use more social&affective strategies.In view of the conclusions of the research on the correlation between listening anxiety and proficiency,the results of whether the instruction of listening learning strategies may reduce listening anxiety cannot be drawn.But the research does not conflict with other researchers’ conclusions on the correlation between them.In case of the current situation,it’s hoped that in listening instruction,we can correctly recognize the reasons for students’ poor listening proficiency,pay much attention to students’ learning and using of listening strategies and guide them to effectively use those strategies they adopted to promote their listening proficiency.Meanwhile,it’s also hoped that different teaching methods can be applied to students with different levels of anxiety in order for them to make great progress and constitute a virtuous circle.