Research on Non-English Majors’ English Reading Anxiety.doc

research on non-english majors english reading anxiety非英语专业大学生英语阅读焦虑研究摘要：学习焦虑是一个心理学概念，属情绪范畴，指的是个体在学习过程中受到障碍的威胁，致使自尊心与自信心受挫，或失败感和内疚感增加，从而形成一种紧张不安，带有恐惧的情绪状态。近些年来，国内外学者对这一影响语言学习的情感因素做了不少研究，主要是对焦虑做出了定义，进行了分类，更重要的是还对焦虑与外语学习的关系及其对外语学习的影响，引起外语学习焦虑的原因以及克服焦虑的对策等进行了探讨和研究。本研究通过对菏泽学院100名二年级非英语专业大学生英语阅读焦虑情况进行问卷调查，将所得数据用spss11.5(社会科学统计软件包)进行分析，试图了解非英语专业大学生在英语阅读中是否存在焦虑现象，英语阅读焦虑是否存在性别差异以及英语阅读焦虑是否与学习成绩存在相关关系等问题。分析显示，非英语专业大学生在英语阅读中确实存在着不同程度的焦虑现象,且个体差异性较大；而且英语阅读焦虑存在着显著的性别差异；同时英语阅读焦虑与学习成绩存在着显著的负相关关系，即英语阅读焦虑感越重，学习成绩就越差。关键词：非英语专业大学生；阅读焦虑；性别差异；英语成绩research on non-english majors english reading anxiety abstract: learning anxiety, belonging to an emotional category, is a psychological concept, which refers to a kind of nervous and fearful emotional state that formed by the frustration of self-esteem and self-confidence and the increasing feeling of failure or guilt due to individuals fail to achieve their expected goals. in recent years, the researches both at home and abroad have done many researchers on this emotional element that influences language study. they have proposed various definitions and classification to it, and to be more important, they have studied the relationship between anxiety and language learning, pointed out the reasons of language learning anxiety and ways to avoid it.this study is based on a questionnaire survey about the non-english majors reading anxiety in which100 non-english major sophomores of heze university were randomly selected as the subjects. through the analysis of spss11.5, the thesis tried to investigate that whether there is anxiety in english reading, whether there is gender difference in english reading anxiety and the correlation between english reading anxiety and academic performance. the findings indicate that there is surely reading anxiety among non-english majors to some extent, there is significant gender difference in english reading anxiety. whats more, there is negative relationship between english reading anxiety and the academic performance; that is to say, the more serious the readers sense of anxiety the worse their academic performance.key words: non-english majors; english reading anxiety; gender difference; academic performance contents摘要. iabstract.iiintroduction.11 literature review.2 1.1 language anxiety.2 1.1.1 definition of language anxiety.3 1.1.2 classification of language anxiety.4 1.2 relationship between language anxiety and academic performance.6 1.3 an overview of specific anxiety types. 61.3.1 language listening anxiety.71.3.2 language speaking anxiety.71.3.3 language writing anxiety. 81.3.4 language reading anxiety.8 1.4 research gaps and questions.92 research methodology.92.1 subjects.92.2 instrument.102.3 data collection.102.4 data analysis.113 results and discussion.113.1 general situation of non-english majors flras.123.1.1 situation of overall flras133.1.2 situation of dimensions of flras 143.2 gender difference in non-english majors flras.15 3.2.1 gender difference in overall flras.15 3.2.2 gender difference in each item of flras. 173.3 relationship between non-english majors flras and academic performance183.4 implications193.4.1 implications for college english teaching203.4.2 implications for college english learning21conclusion.21bibliography.22appendix 大学英语学习调查问卷.23acknowledgements.24introductionsince the 1970s, research focus on second language acquisition has shifted from teachers teaching to students learning (johns, 1991：85). one of the important research areas is about the individual difference that causes learning outcome different (ellis, 1985: 22). in china, some educational researchers have done many researches on anxiety. all in all, they tried to recognize and know chinese students situation of anxiety, the reason that caused anxiety and the countermeasures of the problem.the present thesis aims at drawing a clear picture about the non-english majors english reading anxiety. by analyzing data collected, the author describes the students general english reading anxiety by calculating the mean and standard deviation of each item; then the author tries to explore the gender difference and the correlation between the students reading anxiety and their academic performance. at the same time, this study has a certain theoretical and practical significance. first, it combines the emotional factor of learning anxiety to students english reading learning in order to effectively reduce and overcome anxiety phenomenon, which supplies a new research direction for the study of anxiety in theory; second, the study regards the individual difference of students foreign language learning study and makes the research focus to the aspect of english reading learning. on one hand, students can realize the importance of anxious emotional factor to foreign language learning and then pay attention to it; on the other hand, it has some implications to teachers foreign language teaching especially to the reading teaching with the help of scientific instrument.this thesis is made up of four parts. part 1 reviews the literature on definition and classification of language anxiety and the correlation between language anxiety and academic performance. part 2 describes the methodology adopted in the study, which includes the participants of the study, the research method, procedure for data collection and data analysis. part 3 presents the results and discussions of non-english majors reading anxiety in the present study. part 4 gives a conclusion, which consists of the main findings of present study, the limitations of the present study and also the suggestions for the future development.1 literature reviewin foreign language learning, numerous learner variables are generally said to influence the success or failure of language learning (e. g: l2 motivation, learning strategies, language aptitude, etc.). among these, foreign language anxiety has often been cited as one of the most important affective variables. most of us will have had the experience that in an anxiety-provoking climate our l2knowledge often deteriorates: we forget things that we otherwise know and also make silly mistakes. the past two decades has witnessed a virtual explosion of research into the topic of foreign language anxiety, which will be detailed explained in this chapter. 1.1 language anxiety1.1.1 definition of language anxiety1.1.1.1 definition of anxietyas a special psychological phenomenon, many scholars make definitions to anxiety. the man who proposed the theory of anxiety earlier is soren aabye kierkegaard. he thinks anxiety is the psychological experience that consequentially existed when people face choices. once they form their own consciousness, children will have the tendency of independence and the willingness of choosing their living road. anxiety will come along too. young thinks it is a kind of psychological state or extrinsic manifested form of peoples psychological activity, or the psychological exhibition that people cannot reach or achieve their expected goals. arnold pointed out anxiety is a nervous and fearful emotional state that formed by the frustration of self-esteem and self-confidence and the increasing feeling of failure or guilt due to individuals fail to achieve their expected goals. ellis thinks anxiety is an unreasonable think and stresses the experience of anxiety is closely connected with individuals false cognitive value.most scholars would agree with arnold and browns (1999: 8) conclusion that anxiety is quite possibly the affective factor that most pervasively obstructs the learning process. for this reason anxiety has been in the limelight of l2 research for decades (macintyre, 1999: 65; arnold, 1996: 53).not only is it intuitive to many people that anxiety negatively influences language learning, it is logical because anxiety has been found to interfere with many types of learning and has been one of the most highly examined variables in all of psychology and education (horwitz, 1986: 103). however, up to now, no definition is so satisfactory that no one can contest. 1.1.1.2 definition of language anxietylanguage anxiety is the influences of anxiety to second language (sl) or foreign language (fl). gardner & macintyre regard language anxiety as an experienced fearful feeling when the individual learner is required to use the sl or fl that is not commanded completely in certain circumstances. the next year they redescribe language anxiety as a nervous and fearful feeling that individual learners have special relationship with second language situation, especially the second language behavior. ellis. r defined language anxiety as a fearful or nervous mentality that causes when students realize they will have to use the language they learned to have a “performance”. that is to say, it is a restless or nervous mind that forms when using second language to have a communication. oxford pointed out clearly, in formal and informal learning circumstances; language anxiety is always in the first place as to the influence to foreign language study. she pointed out that the reasons for anxiety are language course score, level testing score, oral and writing expression tasks, self-confidence and self- esteem in language learning. as horwitz (2001: 87) summarized, language anxiety turned out to be a relatively independent factor, displaying only low correlations with general trait-anxiety. this indicates that this factor is not merely a transfer of anxiety from another domain such as test anxiety or communication apprehension but is a uniquely l2-related variable; as macintyre (1999: 27) defines it, language anxiety involves the worry and negative emotional reaction aroused when learning or using a second language. horwitz provided a review of an impressive amount of literature that consistently evidenced the negative impact of language anxiety on language criterion measures. she acknowledged, however, that one particular line of research, by sparks, and their colleagues on the linguistic coding difference hypothesis, regarded language anxiety merely as a consequence of the student cognitive deficits, suggesting therefore that anxiety was not a core construct worthy of research but a mere byproduct. this view has been strongly contested by macintyre (1995a: 303) and horwitz (2000: 201).1.1.2 classification of language anxietygiven the importance and the high profile of anxiety, it is surprising how ambiguous the conceptualization of the concept becomes when we go beyond the surface, as mentioned above; there is an overall uncertainty about the basic category: is it a motivational component? a personality trait? or an emotion? furthermore, anxiety is usually not seen as a unitary factor but a complex made up of constituents that have different characteristics. two important anxiety distinctions are usually mentioned:beneficial/facilitating vs. inhibitory/debilitating anxiety: it has been observed that anxiety does not necessarily inhibit performance but in some cases can actually promote it worry, which is considered the cognitive component of anxiety has been shown to have a negative impact on performance, whereas the affective component, emotionality, does not necessarily have detrimental effects.trait vs. state anxiety: trait anxiety refers to a stable predisposition to become anxious in a cross-section of situations; state anxiety is the transient, moment-to-moment experience of anxiety as an emotional reaction to the current situation.thus, anxiety is a complex construct with several different facets. however, as scovel and his friends describes, in contrast to this multifaceted view, non-specialists tend to equate anxiety simply with fear or phobia, and in language teaching methodological texts the variable is considered to be an arch enemy that needs to be eliminated at all cost.1.2 relationship between language anxiety and academic performancenumerous research studies have consistently yielded moderate negative correlations between foreign language anxiety and foreign language performance, and the pervasive effects that anxiety has on the language-learning process has frequently reported. in an important experimental study investigating the casual relationship between anxiety and academic performance, macintyre and gardner (1994: 212) intentionally aroused anxiety in language learners by introducing a video camera at various points in a vocabulary learning task. seventy-one students of french were randomly assigned to one of four groups, the first three experiencing the camera condition at different phases of task completion (input，processing, and output stages), while the fourth control group was not exposed to the camera. significant increases in state anxiety were reported in three groups when the video camera was introduced, and concomitant deficits in vocabulary acquisition were observed. this demonstrated conclusively that anxiety arousal can play a casual role and lead to performance deficit which implies that language anxiety is not merely a function of poor performance due to insufficient cognitive skills and abilities.it is clear from the reviews of relevant empirical studies on second language acquisition (陈素红, 2005: 31; gardner & clement, 1999: 58) that when anxiety is conceptualized as a situated l2-specific construct, it has a consistently negative bearing on l2 performance. as gardner and macintyre (1993: 6) concluded, the result of these studies of language anxiety suggest that anxious students will have lower levels of verbal production. and will be reluctant to express personally relevant information in a second-language conversation. however, the actual amount of impact the variable exerts also depends on the interplay between anxiety and other factors. gregersen and horwitz, for example，established a link between language anxiety and students academic perfectionism, and in a study already mentioned briefly, dewaele discussed the combined effects of anxiety varies according to the social milieu，with multicultural settings possibly enhancing the correlates of language anxiety and generating a complex construct that combines language anxiety, self-perceptions of l2 proficiency, and attitudinal/motivational components. clements construct of self-confidence is in accordance with this conception.macintyre and gardner (1991a: 103), in a comprehensive review of these studies, conclude: covering several measures of proficiency, in several different samples, and even in somewhat different conceptual frameworks, it has been shown that anxiety negatively affects academic performance in the second language. in some cases, anxiety provides some of the highest simple correlations of attitudes with achievement.it should be noted, however, that not all the studies in their review produced significant correlations between anxiety and achievement. in fact, studies of learner anxiety have often produced even more mixed results. what is needed to account for the role that anxiety plays in language learning, such as that proposed by macintyre and gardner (1991a: 335) and summarized in table1.1 according to this model, the relationship between anxiety and learning is moderated by the learners stage of development and by situation-specific learning experiences. the model also recognizes that poor performance can be the cause as well as the results of the anxiety, a point also made by skehan.table1.1 a model of the role of anxiety in language learning (based on macintyre and gardner 1989a) stage type of anxiety effects of learning beginnervery littlerestricted to state anxiety none post-beginnersituation anxiety develops if learner develops negative expectations based on bad learning experienceslearner expects to be nervous and performs poorly later poor performance and continued bad learning experiences results in increasing anxiety continued poor performance anxiety1.3 an overview of specific anxiety types since 1986, a lot of researchers have been involved in the field of foreign language learning anxiety and the various study reached an almost unanimous conclusion: effects of foreign language learning anxiety is widespread, showing moderate negative correlation. study further found that in the process of listening, speaking, writing and reading, anxiety exists. the researchers noted that foreign language learning anxiety is in different manifestations in different language skills.1.3.1 language listening anxiety a great number of students feel worried or frustrated when the listening task turns out to be above their ability. when some students miss one word in a sentence they may get uneasy and cant follow the tape any more. and also when they hear unfamiliar topics or different dialects and accents, they may feel uncertain about what they are going to hear. these things all arouse a feeling of anxiety in listening comprehension and the results of it will turn out to be a disaster. the message in listening course is provided through sound. when learners hear a word, they usually have three steps to understand the meaning of the word. they firstly hear the pronunciation of the word, and then try to recall the spelling of the word, and finally they can get the meaning of the word. if some information is missed, which brings language anxiety to them, for they can not catch some necessary information. speakers should modestly slower the speech speed and speak with clear pronunciation until learners have reached higher level of listening skill. 1.3.2 language speaking anxiety among the four skills of language learning-reading, writing, listening and speaking, reading is perhaps the easiest, while speaking the most difficult to acquire(gardener & clement, 1999: 287-307). that is because speaking is an active skill, requiring students to combine the words into sentences without preparation, and no time to revise. during this process, learners show their differences, some can draw and organize the information in their mind flexibly, and then speak it out fluently; others cant organize the word