The Relationship Between Korean Speaking Anxiety and Oral Proficiency among Korean Majors in Chinese Undergraduate Programs

School of Asian Studies, Zhejiang Yuexiu University of Foreign Languages, Ningbo, China

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Abstract

At present, the relationship between foreign language speaking anxiety and speaking performance is a hot topic in second language acquisition research, but most related studies focus on English, and there is relatively little empirical research in minor languages such as Korean. Therefore, this study takes Chinese undergraduate students majoring in Korean as its subjects, exploring the relationship between their Korean speaking anxiety and speaking performance, and analyzing the causes and mechanisms of speaking anxiety from the perspectives of language features, language negative transfer, and learner psychology. The results show that Korean grammatical structures, the honorific system, and Chinese-Korean negative language transfer can trigger speaking anxiety, while learners’ fear of negative evaluation is a key psychological factor affecting speaking performance. Accordingly, this study proposes targeted teaching suggestions from the aspects of language, transfer, and psychology, aiming to alleviate speaking anxiety and transform it into learning motivation. This study is expected to enrich empirical evidence on anxiety in non-global languages and provide references for optimizing Korean speaking teaching and talent cultivation.