The present research is a preliminary survey before performing an experimental study, aiming to investigate the relationship between listening anxiety and listening proficiency, and what listening instruction these learners had been given. The participants were 142 university-level Japanese learners of English who completed a questionnaire about listening anxiety based on Elkhafaifi (2005), and about listening instruction based on Vandergrift’s (1997, 2008) listening strategy inventory. Listening proficiency was measured by the TOEIC (IP). The quantitative data showed (a) that participants’ listening anxiety and proficiency level were negatively correlated, (b) that listening anxiety could be understood as a multifaceted concept, and (c) that some strategy instructions would reduce or induce the anxiety experienced by foreign language listeners. The results suggested the need for a more organized questionnaire to measure listening anxiety, so that teachers understand students’ affective problems and can incorporate strategies to address these problems in their instruction on a daily basis.
