大学生英语学习中焦虑问题的研究

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ABSTRACT

This study is designed to identify and compare the levels of anxiety experienced by

a randomly selected sample of second and third-year English learners in Nanyang

Institute of Science and Technology and to investigate the independent and interactive

effects of gender factor with language proficiency on the levels of language anxiety.

To measure the perceived levels of language anxiety of the participants that

comprise 185 English majors in this descriptive/analytical research, two self-report

means, namely, interviews and questionnaires are employed. And the data obtained

from the English Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (ELCAS) is analyzed with the

Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS Statistical Package, Version 11.5) using

four statistical tests: descriptive statistics, mainly means and standard deviation, is used

to describe the general levels of language anxiety; Pearson’s product-moment

correlation and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient to estimate the validity and reliability of

the newly adapted ELCAS; one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to determine

whether the levels of anxiety experienced by students of different grade and sex are

significantly different at a 0.05 probability level; bivariate correlate analysis to identify

how levels of anxiety correlate with gender and language proficiency factors.

On the basis of the empirical research, the following results are obtained:

1. Some levels of anxiety are experienced by the university students in response to

some aspects of English language learning, no matter they are sophomores or

juniors, males or females, and their anxiety levels are of moderate degree.

2. Factors that have an impact on students’ anxiety in learning English are

communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation. The

construct of communication apprehension has the most impact on students’ English

language anxiety.

3. There is no significant difference of perceptions between sophomores and juniors

for the ELCAS towards anxiety in English language learning.

4. Gender differences do not affect, either independently or interactively with

language proficiency, the degrees to which Chinese learners feel anxious in the

English language class.

The current thesis comprises four chapters: Chapter one gives an introductory

account of the research, including its origins, aims, method, significance and design.

Chapter two covers quite an extensive review of the literature that is relative to anxiety

and the relationship between anxiety and foreign language learning. Chapter three

describes the methodology, including the issues that the study is intended to address, the

setting and subjects in the sample, the instruments to measure English language anxiety

and to compare the perceived levels of anxiety experienced by the two samples of

foreign language students, the procedures that the research goes through, and the

hypotheses and questions which we advocate with reference to the previous empirical

and theoretical work as well as to our own observations and judgments. Chapter four

presents summary descriptive statistics for this analytical study and after discussions of

them, some tentative conclusions are made. Then the paper concludes with some

pedagogical implications as well as suggestions for future researches.

This research has explored a very important but under-developed area of the

foreign language anxiety and provided pedagogical implications for English teaching

and learning in the Chinese regular university context.

Key Words ：anxiety, gender ，proficiency ，English language

learning, foreign language anxiety，English language anxiety

摘要

本文报告了对南阳理工学院英语专业二年级和三年级学生所做的一次调查研

究，目的是调查和比较学生在英语学习中的焦虑程度，同时研究性别(gender)和英

语水平(proficiency)二因素对焦虑程度高低的影响。

本描述性研究使用了面谈和问卷调查来测试 185 名学生的焦虑水平。然后，

借助社科统计软件包 SPSS(11.5 版本)对英语课堂学习焦虑量表(English Language

Classroom Anxiety Scale)所测得的学生在英语课堂上焦虑程度的原始数据进行处

理。主要的统计步骤是：

1. 使用描述性统计数字(descriptive statistics)－主要是平均数和标准差－描述量表

总体测试结果。

2. 通过皮尔逊积差相关系数(Pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficient)和 a

信度系数(Cronbach’s alpha coefficient), 估计英语课堂学习焦虑量表的效度和

信度。

3. 运用单因素方差分析 ANOVA(one-way analysis of variance)来分别考察不同水平

和性别学生的焦虑程度是否显著不同。

4. 运用双因素相关性分析(bivariate correlate)分析性别和英语水平两因素对学生在

英语学习中焦虑程度的影响。

通过以上统计手段，本文得出以下结论：

1. 无论是二年级还是三年级，男生还是女生，大学生在英语学习的过程中都会对

语言学习的一些方面产生某种程度的焦虑，且他们的总体焦虑水平处于中等焦

虑程度。

2. 交际畏惧对学生在英语学习中焦虑产生的影响最大。

3. 大二学生和大三学生在英语学习中的焦虑程度没有显著不同。

4. 性别因素不单独或和英语水平因素一起影响学生在英语课堂的焦虑程度。

本文对语言焦虑研究有参考意义，尤其是对国内正规大学环境中英语学习者

的教学有现实指导意义。同时，本文的研究方法也可用于其它语种的类似研究。

关键词：焦虑性别水平英语语言学习外语学习中的焦虑英语

学习中的焦虑

Contents

Acknowledgements

English Abstract

Chinese Abstract

Chapter One Introduction ..............................................................................................1

1.1 Origins of the research ......................................................................................... 1

1.2 Aims of the research .............................................................................................2

1.3 Method of the research .........................................................................................3

1.4 Significance of the research ................................................................................. 3

1.5 Design of the research ..........................................................................................4

Chapter Two Literature Review .................................................................................... 6

2.1 Affect ....................................................................................................................6

2.2 Anxiety and F/SL learning ................................................................................... 6

2.2.1 Definition of anxiety .................................................................................. 7

2.2.2 Definition of foreign language anxiety ...................................................... 7

2.2.3 Differentiation between foreign language anxiety and general anxiety .... 8

2.2.4 Relations among anxiety, cognition, and behavior .................................... 9

2.3 Foreign language anxiety ................................................................................... 11

2.3.1 Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope’s construct of foreign language anxiety .....11

2.3.2 Development and maintenance of foreign language anxiety ................... 14

2.3.3 Correlates of foreign language anxiety .................................................... 15

2.3.4 Gender in relation to language anxiety .................................................... 18

2.3.5 State and trait language anxiety ............................................................... 19

2.3.6 Effects of anxiety on foreign language learning ...................................... 20

2.3.6.1 Facilitating anxiety .........................................................................22

2.3.6.2 Debilitating anxiety ........................................................................23

2.3.6.3 Theoretical interpretations of the effects of anxiety on language

learning ...................................................................................................... 25

2.3.7 Measurement of foreign language anxiety level ...................................... 27

2.4 Summary ............................................................................................................ 29

Chapter Three Methodology........................................................................................ 31

3.1 Research objectives ............................................................................................31

3.1.1 Research questions ...................................................................................31

3.1.2 Hypotheses ............................................................................................... 32

3.2 The setting and subjects ..................................................................................... 32

3.3 Instruments .........................................................................................................33

3.3.1 Form of the anxiety questionnaire ........................................................... 33

3.3.2 Contents of the anxiety questionnaire ......................................................35

3.3.3 Validity and reliability of the questionnaire ............................................. 36

3.4 Experimental Procedures ................................................................................... 36

3.4.1 Data collection ......................................................................................... 37

3.4.2 Data analysis ............................................................................................ 38

Chapter Four Conclusions and Discussions ............................................................... 39

4.1 Results ................................................................................................................39

4.2 Tentative conclusions ......................................................................................... 47

4.3 Discussions ........................................................................................................ 47

4.3.1 Flaws of the research ............................................................................... 47

4.3.2 Lessons learned from the interviews ........................................................48

4.4 Pedagogical implications ................................................................................... 50

Appendix I Abbreviations ............................................................................................ 53

Appendix II The English Language Classroom Anxiety Scale ................................. 54

Notes ............................................................................................................................... 57

References ...................................................................................................................... 59

在读期间公开发表的论文和承担科研项目及取得成果 ............................................ 65

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Origins of the research

Since my graduation from the normal university in 1997, I have been teaching

English in Nanyang Institute of Science and Technology. During my teaching

experience, I noticed that learning English can be exciting for some of my students, but

for others, it could also be dreaded. Many students claim to have a mental block against

learning English, although these same students may be good learners in other situations,

strongly motivated, and have a sincere liking for speakers of English. The fact that the

students who felt more tense in English learning achieved less than the more relaxed

ones also came into my notice. Based on my own learning and teaching experience, I

felt that being anxious was a hindrance to efficient English learning and so my advice

for those students who felt tenser was always “Relax yourself”. After discussing with

some experienced teachers, I found they shared my idea. Later, in the first year of my

postgraduate study in Shanghai University for Science and Technology, I came across

some articles on the topic of anxiety. Several authors like Scovel (1978), Shumman

(1975, 1998), Krashen (1985) and MacIntyre and Gardner (1991, 1992 and 1994),

discussed the role of emotional variables in foreign language teaching and learning.

They hold that among other affective variables, anxiety stands out as one of the main

blocking factors for effective language learning. It surprised me that such a seemingly

intangible matter could be handled in a scientific way and my curiosity was aroused.

From then on, I started paying serious attention to the literature on anxiety studies,

hoping that some day I could also write something on the topic. Thus, when it was time

for us to write a thesis paper in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MA, and after the feasibility was considered, I decided on the present project.

The relevance of students’ anxiety as an educational problem made some

researchers enquire about the fact that the kind of anxiety which affects foreign

language learners is of a special kind, stated by Horwitz et all (1991, p.27) as Foreign

Language Anxiety. Researchers have also studied the effects of anxiety on foreign

language learning since the 1970's. Up to now, a large body of research has shown

consistently that language anxiety is significantly and negatively correlated with

language learning. But in spite of substantial advances in language anxiety,

apprehension continues to exist in the university foreign language classroom.

In this survey, I have chosen English language anxiety in regular university setting

as the dependent variable mainly for three reasons. The first reason lies in the paucity of

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摘要：

ABSTRACTThisstudyisdesignedtoidentifyandcomparethelevelsofanxietyexperiencedbyarandomlyselectedsampleofsecondandthird-yearEnglishlearnersinNanyangInstituteofScienceandTechnologyandtoinvestigatetheindependentandinteractiveeffectsofgenderfactorwithlanguageproficiencyonthelevelsoflanguageanxiety.Tomeas...

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