Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety of Arab learners of English: The effect of personality, linguistic and sociobiographical variables

By Jean–Marc Dewaele, Taghreed M. Al-Saraj. 2015

117 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The present study focuses on the link between psychological, sociobiographical and linguistic variables and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety of 348 Arabic learners of English (250 females, 98 males). Data were collected using the Arabic Foreign Language Anxiety Questionnaire (AFLAQ; Al-Saraj, 2011, 2014) and an Arabic version of the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire-Short Form (MPQ-SF; van der Zee, van Oudenhoven, Ponterotto & Fietzer, 2013). Multiple regression analyses revealed that self-perceived proficiency in oral English and frequency of use of English explained over a third of variance in FLCA: More proficient and frequent users felt less anxious. Two personality traits, Emotional Stability and Social Initiative explained a further fifth of variance in FLCA, with emotionally stable and more extraverted participants scoring lower on FLCA. Age was the final predictor of a small amount of variance, with older participants feeling less anxious. Degree of multilingualism, sex and education level had no effect on FLCA.

Subfields: Communication, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d1b7f7c9e712a9e0eef8ebdec433067e4ce633d3

How researchers see this paper

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

In Communication

1. Jean–Marc Dewaele
2. Chunmei Pan
3. Xian Zhang
4. C. Harris
5. A. Panayiotou

In Social Psychology

1. Xian Zhang
2. Chunmei Pan
3. Jean–Marc Dewaele
4. M. Alfawzan
5. Chengchen Li
6. P. Macintyre

Citations in the corpus

• Does the effect of enjoyment outweigh that of anxiety in foreign language performance (2018, background): “While the majority of work carried out on FLCA has been conducted in western cultures, it has been picked up by researchers around the globe, including in Saudi Arabia (Al-Saraj, 2011, 2014; Al Asmari, 2015; Alrabai, 2014; Dewaele & Al-Saraj, 2015).”
• A longitudinal study of foreign language anxiety and enjoyment (2021, background): “…(a measure of emotional stability, Costa & McCrae, 1992) and extraversion (as reflected through social initiative a proactive tendency in socializing and communication) (Dewaele, 2013; Dewaele & Al-Saraj, 2015; Dewaele & Furnham, 1999; Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2019; MacIntyre & Charos, 1996).”