With the deepening of international cultural exchanges, the issue of cultural identity anxiety caused by it has also become a research hotspot. In the context of China, where foreign language education predominantly revolves around the teaching of English, a singular approach has led to an intensified experience of cultural identity anxiety among students throughout their learning journey.

To explore the impact of cultural identity on students’ anxiety disorders in English language and literature teaching, this study randomly selected 120 students from a certain university to conduct a questionnaire survey on cultural identity anxiety. Then, a cultural identity module was added to the English language and literature teaching of these 120 students, and the experiment lasted for two months. After the experiment, a questionnaire survey was conducted again on cultural identity anxiety among 120 experimental students. Analyze the anxiety relief of students based on the survey results.

The experimental results showed that before the experiment, 33 out of 120 students had mild cultural identity anxiety, 53 had moderate anxiety, 17 had severe anxiety, and 17 had no anxiety. After teaching on cultural identity, the number of students who did not experience anxiety about cultural identity increased to 41 out of 120, with 65, 12, and 2 students experiencing mild, moderate, and severe anxiety, respectively. After receiving cultural identity education, students’ anxiety in learning English language and literature has been alleviated.

Cultural identity education in English language and literature teaching can alleviate students’ anxiety.