论文作业

Anxiety Problems in Listening Comprehension and Its Strategies 摘要 中国学生在外语学习中都不同程度地存在学习的焦虑，尤其在听力方面。学习者往往由于担心自己听不懂或不能理解材料内容而产生的担心、畏惧、紧张等的焦虑情绪已经成为影响听力理解最重要的因素。尽管老师和学生都尽力而为，但听力效果仍不令人满意。因此，本文重点对听力理解中的焦虑问题进行研究，找到焦虑产生的原因及解决策略进而提高听力教学和听力学习是这篇论文的写作目的。 关键字：焦虑 听力理解 策略 Abstract Generally, Chinese college students experience psychological anxiety in foreign language learning, especially in listening learning.The anxiety emotion produced by students when they do not understand or fear for receiving sidely this comment has been the most important factor that affects listening comprehension.Although teachers and students make every effort to listening comprehension,the listening result is still not so satisfactory.Therefore,this paper focuses on the anxiety problems in listening comprehension.The aim of this paper is to find out the causes of anxiety and its copping strategies so as to improve listening teaching and learning. Key words: anxiety listening comprehension strategies Introduction In a much-cited study, Rankin asked people to report how much time they spent in various types of communication, the report showed that people listened 45% of the time, spoke 30% of the time, read 16% and wrote 9% (Rankin,1929). Of the basic four English skills, listening, speaking, reading, writing, listening has been overlooked ever for long time, especially in those remote regions and areas. Due to the lack of attention paid to listening, it proves to be the most anxiety provoking and problematic for foreign language learners (Horwitz, Horwitz & cope, 1986). Students will anxious and impatient when they find the listening task very difficult or unfamiliar compared to their current listening proficiency. Listening comprehension is very complex and difficult because it requires that learners should have a high level of sensitivity and recognition ability to combine the phonetic and semantic features of a language. It demands the listeners have a high ability to give transient response when listening process beings. Thus it is normal that listening can result in students high level of anxiety and fidget when they are encountered with incomprehensible input, especially in an English listening test. There are various researches on the relationship between learning strategies and language performance. Some studies found that people employing more learning strategies feed less anxious and tense than others. More studies revealed the negative correlations between language anxiety and strategy use. Thus it is becoming necessary to do some researches on the internal interrelations between them. This thesis is about to do some exploration of the relationship between anxiety and listening comprehension as well as the strategies for solving anxiety. Chapter I Literature Review 1.1Literature Review of Anxiety In this chapter,the focus is on the previous studies and relevant literature concerning anxiety.Therefore, previous researches concerned with listening anxiety will be reviewed. 1.1.1Definition of Anxiety It is generally considered that anxiety is an important emotional factor effecting learners' foreign language learning. Anxiety is a very complicated psychological concept, which was defined by many scholars and researchers. Atkinson considered anxiety as "a state of apprehension, a vague fear that is only indirectly associated with an object" (Scovel, 1978).Spielberger (1972) thought it as a "transitory emotional state or condition characterized feelings of tension and apprehension and heightened autonomic nervous system activity".And it was "the subjective feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness, and worry associated with an arousal of the autonomic nervous system" (Spielberger, 1966). Young(1986) examined the relationship between state anxiety and oral performance and found a significantly negative relation between anxiety and oral proficiency.Yuh-show Cheng (1999)investigated the relations between FL anxiety and writing anxiety and suggested that writing anxiety is a language-skill-specific anxiety, quite different from foreign language anxiety, the general type of anxiety...Their study confirmed the previous quantitative researches findings on the negative impact on language learning, and enriched our knowledge of other factors related to language anxiety. 1.1.2Categories of Anxiety In the line with different standards, foreign language anxiety can be divided into different types. According to the stages of learning process, Tobias (1986) categorized it into three types: input anxiety, processing anxiety, and output anxiety. And another distinction of foreign language anxiety, in the light of learning context, consists of trait anxiety, state anxiety and situation-specific anxiety (Spielberger, 1983). In terms of impacts on language learning, many researchers theorized it into two categories: facilitating anxiety and debilitating anxiety (Alpert&Haber, 1960; Kleinmann, 1977; Scovel, 1978, see Kim, 2000). Facilitating anxiety is conducive to stimulate and motivate learners’ academic performance, while debilitating anxiety works in quite opposite direction, which can inhibit,block the second language acquisition and language acquisition does not progress(Kim, 2000;Zhou, 2003).This paper is based on this distinction to explore the relationship between debilitating anxiety and listening comprehension. 1.2A General Review of Anxiety on Listening Comprehension Among the four basic skills (listening, reading, speaking and writing) in English study and applications, listening ranks the first. Listening takes up an extremely important position in middle school English teaching. We should strengthen students’ capability of English listening comprehension.The present listening teaching and research in China’s middle schools are not satisfactory (Wen Qiufang, 1996). Examination–based education has existed for a long time; English teaching often focuses on the grammar knowledge and the examination result but forgets to cultivate the students’ communicative capacity.