EXPLORING THE INFLUENCE OF ANXIETY SENSITIVITY ON COLLEGE ENGLISH LEARNING -BASED ON THE LEARNING ATTACHMENT STYLES
Authors: Lu Hsin-Ke , Chu Kuo-Chung , Lin Peng-Chun , Chen Alexander N 
Published: July 2022

Background

Many researches on collaborative learning have shifted the focus from implementation to social construction with others. We propose learning attachment to explore students' interpersonal relationships in a collaborative learning environment. Learning attachment style is based on Bobby's model, which asserts that patterns reflect the working patterns of self and others. In this study, learning attachment among students, teaching assistants and teachers is considered to be a factor of individual differences, which may mediate the impact on learning performance, especially in the context of collaborative learning. It also studies the impact of students' anxiety on interpersonal relationships

Subjects and Methods

This study developed and verified the learning Attachment Scale (LAI) by synthesizing the theoretical model in the literature review, purifying the items in the expert focus group, and testing the reliability and validity of the learning attachment scale through statistical analysis. The four scales of learning attachment style are self-confidence, trust, dependence and avoidance. After developing the contents of 40 projects within the four dimensions, experts will explain and evaluate them, and then jointly decide and confirm whether the contents of these projects conform to their respective dimensions and whether the expression is appropriate. This study takes 504 undergraduates from 12 universities in Taiwan as the research object, and uses the validated learning attachment scale to evaluate them. All participants have experience in collaborative learning. Their ages ranged from 19 to 29, with an average age of 26.76. We use Kim's foreign language listening anxiety scale as the measurement scale, and use Likert scoring method to evaluate the scale. Pearson correlation, standard deviation and statistical significance are combined to illustrate the correlation. T-test of independent samples was used to verify the difference between high anxiety group and low anxiety group. According to the statistical value of anxiety, participants were divided into three groups: low, medium and high anxiety groups. The questionnaire includes two kinds of anxiety, namely debilitating anxiety and promoting anxiety. Through t-test, univariate and multivariate analysis of variance and regression analysis, we investigated the relationship between foreign language anxiety, self-efficacy and academic achievement of students of different genders.

Results

The results showed that the scale had sufficient internal consistency (overall Cronbach coefficient &gt; 0.86), and the total variance explained was more than 58.06%. Finally, this study takes 504 undergraduates from 12 universities as the research object, and illustrates the evaluation of Lai through a case. The effective data collected from the survey were further analyzed, and the four identification types were clustered. Type 1 is one of the two main types, including students with the highest average value of learning dependence; The lowest average value of avoidance; He is gentle in confidence and trust. In a collaborative learning environment, they often rely on peer discussion or listening to others' opinions to complete tasks. Type 4 students showed the highest average value of avoidance and dependence and the lowest average value of trust. These students believe in themselves more than others and rely more on their peers when they complete tasks. These findings are very consistent with the cultural background and behavioral characteristics of Taiwanese students. At the same time, based on the foreign language listening anxiety scale designed by Kim, we studied the level of self-efficacy and anxiety, and found that compared with male college students, female college students' foreign language achievement and self-efficacy level are much higher. However, there is no significant difference in anxiety level between male and female college students.

Conclusions

Learning attachment style is one of the factors with great individual differences. In the collaborative learning environment, learning attachment style may have an impact on academic performance. The new learning Attachment Scale (LAI) was synthesized and validated as an effective tool. Using this scale, students are gathered together to distinguish the social interaction of work patterns in teams, which provides a new perspective for exploring the relationship between the factors affecting collaborative learning. Obviously, future research can test the relationship between learners' attachment styles and learning outcomes. Our results showed that although there was a positive correlation between promoting anxiety and English listening performance, it was not statistically significant (P &gt; 0.05). Among the students' psychological anxiety, debilitating anxiety dominated, and the results were statistically significant (P &lt; 0.01). This means that debilitating anxiety can be used as an index to measure the anxiety level of college students. Our results show that there is a negative correlation between listening anxiety and listening performance. The Pearson correlation in the high anxiety group was significantly higher than that in the low anxiety group. This shows that students with poor English level are more likely to be anxious than students with good English level. Independent sample t-test verified that there was significant difference in debilitating anxiety between the two groups, P &lt; 0.01, but there was no significant difference in promoting anxiety, P &gt; 0.05.