A Study on the Causes and Influences of Foreign Language Speaking Anxiety in College Students

Abstract: As the trend of global integration becomes more and more obvious, the ability to communicate in oral English becomes increasingly important. However, many students have great anxiety in the process of English learning, which has a huge impact on the improvement of students' English level. This paper will use case analysis to review the research on foreign language speaking anxiety at home and abroad, starting from one of the important components of foreign language learning anxiety, and review the research on foreign language speaking anxiety from four aspects: theory, cause, influence on motivation and influence on achievement, based on two main directions of theoretical and empirical research. The results show that (1) Horwitz's foreign language anxiety theory and Krashen's affective filter hypothesis are the main ones; (2) Speaking anxiety can be simply divided into internal anxiety and external anxiety; (3) Speaking anxiety has both positive and negative effects on students' learning motivation; (4) High speaking anxiety is not conducive to students' performance progress. Based on the results of the analysis, this paper reviews the shortcomings of the research on foreign language speaking anxiety and looks forward to the future of the research.