An Investigation of Chinese Undergraduates' Foreign Language Anxiety: Changes and Differences

Li LIU ； Meihua LIU ； Danli SU

《Asian Journal of English Language Teaching》 20卷 (2010/12) Pp. 47-64

摘要

This paper reports on the results of a study of Chinese EFL learners' degree of and changes in foreign language classroom anxiety over a term. A 36-item survey involving 934 first-year undergraduate non-English majors revealed that: (1) the whole sample, as well as the three university samples of males and females, were generally not anxious, felt confident and did not worry much about their performance in English class both at the beginning and toward the end of the term; (2) significant differences existed in all aspects of foreign language classroom anxiety between males and females and among students from different learning contexts in both phases; and (3) the whole sample became significantly less anxious, more confident and less worried about their performance in class over a term's learning, so did female respondents and the Beijing Union University sample. Based on these findings, some implications and suggestions for future research will be discussed.