An empirical investigation on college teachers’foreign language anxiety

【Abstract】The author adopted an empirical quantitative method by employing Horwitzs Teacher Foreign Language Anxiety Scale （TFLAS）to determine the anxiety level of ninety teacher participants from Tianjin Foreign Studies University.SPSS11.5 was used for data analysis and the results showed that no one experienced high levels anxiety and student teachers were commonly more anxious than in-service teachers.

【Key Words】teacher foreign language anxiety； empirical analysis，spss.

Most studies of foreign language anxiety centered on foreign language students，and few ever took foreign language teachers under consideration.Horwitz （1996）argued that many foreign language teachers still experienced foreign language anxiety.Several recent studies have addressed the issue of teachers foreign language anxiety （Horwitz，1992； Horwitz，1993）In China，few people have ever conducted research on teacher foreign language anxiety.

the author found 76 in-service teachers and 14 student teachers from English Department of Tianjin Foreign Studies University and adopted an empirical quantitative method by employing Horwitzs Teacher Foreign Language Anxiety Scale （TFLAS）to determine the anxiety level of ninety teacher participants.SPSS11.5 was used for data analysis

The purpose of the study is to analyze and summarize teacher foreign language anxiety of the examined 90 instructors.

There are two research questions：

Question one：Is the general level of FL anxiety of nonnative English teachers in English department high？

Question two：Does there exist any significant difference of their FL anxiety level among the teachers examined？

The descriptive statistical analysis of teacher foreign language anxiety

To determine the anxiety level of the tested teachers，their responses to all the 18 questions in the scale were added up.A total score of more than 72 for the scale means high anxiety in English classroom，a total score of 54 to 72 implies moderate anxieties，and a total score of less than 54 signifies slight or no anxiety.

The actual range for the TFLAS for the present study was 23 to 67，with a mean of 43.07 （SD=9.336），indicating that most of the English teachers suffered little or no foreign language anxiety.Therefore，the general level of FL anxiety of nonnative English teachers in English department is low and the first Hypothesis was rejected.

Comparison between male teachers and female teachers

Of the total investigated instructors，19 were male and 71 were female.The independent samples test showed that no significant difference （t（88）=.433，p>.05）was found between the two genders，which implied that the mean of the male group was not significantly different from the mean of female group.

Comparison between student teachers and in-service teachers

Among the 90 subjects，there were 14 student teachers and 76 in-service teachers.In-service teachers are usually more experienced than student teachers in teaching.Then，whether there exists disparity between the two categories in anxiety will be revealed by the following independent samples T-test.

The independent samples T-test implied that a significant difference （t（88）=4.308，p<.05）was located between the two categories，which elucidated mean scores of student teachers was significantly higher than those of in-service teachers.It proves that student teachers are generally more anxious than in-service teacher in foreign language classroom.

The descriptive statistics of teachers responses on TFLAS illustrated that most of the nonnative English teacher participants suffered little or no foreign language anxiety，Besides，there was no significant difference between male and female instructors in teacher foreign language anxiety and student teachers significantly scored higher than in-service teachers in anxiety scale，which proved that student teachers were commonly more anxious than in-service teachers.

Reference：

[1]Horwitz，E，K.（1992）.Not for learners only：The language anxiety of nonnative teacher trainees，Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International association of teachers of English to speakers of other languages，Vancouver，Canada，March 1992.

[2]Horwitz，E，K.（1993）.Foreign language anxiety and preservice language teachers，Paper presented at annual meeting of the American Council of Teachers of FL s，San Antonio，TX，November，1993.

[3]Horwitz，E.K.（1996）.Even Teachers Get the Blues：Recognizing and Alleviating Language TeachersFeelings of Foreign Language Anxiety.Foreign Language Annals，29，365-372.

【资助项目】天津农学院教育教学改革研究项目（2014-B-16）。

作者简介：刘苑（1986-）女，天津农学院助教，硕士，研究方向：外语教学和应用语言学。