Foreign Language Anxiety among Technical College Students in English Class

Abstract

English has become an indispensable communicative tool in this modern society. English learning is affected by several factors such as learning motivation, effort, environment, cognitive ability, and foreign language anxiety. The purpose of this study was to understand the English learning anxiety among technical college freshmen. Statistic analysis methods, such as descriptive statistics, T-test, analysis of variance, and Pearson product-moment correlation analysis were adopted. The researcher investigated the following problems concerning foreign language anxiety. (1) Were there differences in language anxiety between male and female students? (2) To what extent did ineffective and effective learners differ in their anxiety level? (3) What were the differences in language anxiety among students with different studying time after class? (4) What were the major foreign language anxieties for technical college students? The results revealed that male students had higher test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation than female students did, while female students had higher communication apprehension anxiety. Language anxiety and learning proficiency affected each other. There was significantly negative correlation between overall language anxiety scores and learning proficiency. Students' language anxiety was negatively correlated to their studying time after class. Students were most anxious about communicating with native speakers in English learning.