Cognitive appraisal and coping styles of college students’ English learning anxiety

¹ Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China
² Baotou Tearchers’ College, Baotou, China
^† These authors contributed equally.

^* Corresponding author: huangm2022@sustech.edu.cn

Abstract

Nowadays, international communication is becoming more and more frequent. As an international language, English is being studied by college students in more and more countries and regions. In the process of college students’ English learning, anxiety is a psychological factor that has an important influence on the learning effect. When college students feel anxious about learning English, the different cognitive appraisals will lead to different coping styles, which will also affect the degree of anxiety and the learning effect of college students. Therefore, this research uses Chinese college students as the sample and adopts the method of a questionnaire survey to study the relationship among the degree of English learning anxiety, cognitive appraisal, and coping style of college students. It is found that college students tend to adopt more positive coping styles when facing English learning anxiety. Positive coping styles are significantly correlated with secondary appraisal, while negative coping styles are significantly correlated with primary appraisal. In the primary appraisal, the ‘threat’ factor is significantly different from the variables of gender and education of college students. In the secondary appraisal, there is a significant difference between the ‘control expectation’ factor and the educational background variable. The research could provide some evidence support for the intervention of college students’ English learning anxiety in the future.