An Empirical Study on Anxiety and Motivation in English as a Foreign Language

Mei HAO ； Meihua LIU ； Ruoping HAO

《Asian Journal of English Language Teaching》 14卷 (2004/12) Pp. 89-104

摘要

Perceived to be two important affective variables, anxiety and motivation have been found to be highly correlated with second/foreign language acquisition. In order to examine the relationship between achievement motivation, test anxiety and students' English proficiency, the present study investigated 131 graduate students of science at a university in Mainland China. It was found that test anxiety was significantly correlated with the students' English proficiency and the cloze test. A positive relationship was also found between the students' English proficiency and achievement motivation in terms of both motivation to approach success (Ms) and motivation to avoid failure (Mf). Again, these two motivations were significantly related to the cloze test. In addition, differences in test anxiety and achievement motivation between male and female students were identified. Female students reported to be more test-anxious than their male counterparts. Male students were high in Ms whereas females were high in Mf. Finally, suggestions for minimizing students' test anxiety and enhancing motivation for achievement in foreign language learning were provided, and some pedagogical implications were discussed.