Foreign Language Anxiety and Foreign Language Performance: A Meta‐Analysis

By Xian Zhang. The Modern Language Journal, 2019

280 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This meta-analysis investigated the relationship between foreign language (FL) anxiety and FL performance. Fifty-five independent samples with more than 10,000 participants were surveyed. It was found that the overall correlation between FL anxiety and FL performance was ?.34 (p < .01). FL listening anxiety had the strongest correlation with FL listening performance. Both FL reading anxiety and test anxiety had a weaker correlation with FL performance as compared to other types of anxiety. The anxiety?performance correlation remained stable across groups with different FL proficiency levels, suggesting that the role of FL anxiety should not be ignored regardless of the FL learners? proficiency level. As compared to language family, lexical similarity was found to have a more decisive modulating effect on the anxiety?performance correlation. However, language family and lexical similarity may interact to affect the anxiety?performance correlation. Finally, a metaregression analysis showed that age could affect the correlation between FL anxiety and performance.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Language and Linguistics, Literature and Literary Theory

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/253363c78a36b3479b4162861a77eacdeed93229

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

1. Chunmei Pan
2. Guiying Jiang
3. Xian Zhang
4. Lawrence Jun Zhang
5. Chengchen Li
6. Lin Sophie Teng
7. Aijiao Wu
8. (Mark) Feng Teng

In Language and Linguistics

1. Chengchen Li
2. Chunmei Pan
3. Lawrence Jun Zhang
4. Guiying Jiang
5. Xian Zhang
6. Lin Sophie Teng
7. Jean–Marc Dewaele
8. Ju Seong Lee

In Literature and Literary Theory

1. Chengchen Li
2. Chunmei Pan
3. Guiying Jiang
4. Xian Zhang
5. Lawrence Jun Zhang
6. R. Erlam
7. Jean–Marc Dewaele
8. Aijiao Wu

Citations in the corpus

• A longitudinal study of foreign language anxiety and enjoyment (2021, methodology): “The psychometric properties of questionnaires and scales that measure FLE have been investigated by several recent studies (Jin & Zhang, 2019; Li, Jiang, & Dewaele, 2018).”
• Conceptualisation and measurement of foreign language learning burnout among Chinese EFL students (2021, background): “In three recent meta-analyses by Botes, Dewaele, and Grei ff (2020), Teimouri, Goetze, and Plonsky (2019) and Zhang (2019), the results show a consistent moderate negative correlation between foreign language anxiety and FL performance ( r = − .39, r = − .36, and r = − .34 respectively).”