The purpose of this study was to investigate foreign language anxiety and beliefs about language learning of university students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in mainland China. In addition, the relationship between foreign language anxiety and students7 beliefs about language learning was studied. A total of 175 first and second year university students participated in the study. A set of questionnaires consisting of the Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory (Honvitz, 1987), Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (Honvitz, 1983) and a background questionnaire were translated into Chinese and administered to the subjects. Several similarities and differences were observed between the Chinese subjects7 responses to the BALLI and those of American foreign language students (Honvitz, 1988), Taiwanese EFL students (Yang, 1992), Korean EFL students (Truitt, 1995), American students of French (Kern, 1995), American students of Japanese (Oh, 1996), and Turkish-speaking students of English (Kunt, 1997). The Chinese subjects in this study reported higher levels of foreign language anxiety than the subjects in previous studies. Two BALLI factors were found to be significantly correlated with foreign language anxiety: "the difficulty about language learning" (r = .544 p< .01) and "beliefs about foreign language aptitude" (r = -.255 p< .01), suggesting that Chinese EFL students who believe English is not a very difficult language and perceive themselves as having higher language aptitude in language learning tend to have lower levels of language anxiety. This study contributes to the understanding of EFL students7 beliefs about language learning, and the frustrations and difficulties they experience in foreign language classrooms.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/787 |
| Date | 10 April 2008 |
| Creators | Wang, Nan. |
| Contributors | Anthony, Robert J. |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Detected Language | English |
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