1. Speaking Anxiety: More of a Function of Personality than Language Achievement.
- Author
-
Wang Tianjian
- Subjects
ENGLISH as a foreign language ,ENGLISH language education ,LANGUAGE ability ,ANXIETY ,PERSONALITY ,EDUCATION ,CHINESE students - Abstract
The present study investigated the speaking anxiety of Chinese EFL learners as well as the relationships of speaking anxiety with other variables, including trait anxiety, unwillingness to communicate, language achievement, speaking self-efficacy, language class risk-taking, and language class sociability. The data were analyzed with SPSS and Amos. The results revealed that (a) over 50% of the students reported experiencing moderate or high levels of speaking anxiety; (b) speaking anxiety did not differ significantly over gender, but differed significantly over groups (lower proficiency groups reported a higher mean level of anxiety); (c) speaking anxiety had a complicated relationship to the other variables; (d) personality factors were found to be the primary causes of speaking anxiety; and (e) mutual influences existed between language achievement and speaking anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2010