Foreign Language Anxiety and Strategy Use: A Study with Chinese Undergraduate EFL Learners

The present study explored foreign language anxiety and strategy use in relation to their interactive effect on the students' performance in English. The participants were 934 Chinese undergraduates who completed a 71-item survey. Complicated statistical analyses (e.g., correlation analyses, regression analyses and structural equaling model) were run on the data, which show that 1) nearly one-third of the students experienced anxiety in English class, 2) the participants mainly reported a medium use of both cognitive and metacognitive strategies, 3) foreign language classroom anxiety, cognitive strategy use, and metacognitive strategy use were all significantly correlated with one another, and 4) all the measured variables produced a significant effect on the students' performance in English. Based on the findings, some implications for teaching and learning of English are discussed.