Foreign Language Anxiety

Foreign language anxiety, also known as xenoglossophobia, is the unease, worry, nervousness and apprehension experienced in learning or using a second or foreign language, whether tied to the productive skills of speaking and writing or the receptive skills of reading and listening. Research has found it a significant problem in language classrooms worldwide, especially through its strong relationship to speaking performance, and describes it as a situation-specific anxiety reaction that can affect people who are not otherwise characteristically anxious; its main causes are communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation, alongside a psychological component. While it was traditionally viewed as purely debilitating, more recent scholarship recognizes a facilitating form of anxiety that can motivate learners, incorporates positive-psychology concepts such as foreign language enjoyment, and has begun examining how the anxiety manifests differently in online environments and in interactions with artificial intelligence tools. It has a range of detrimental effects on foreign language performance, but both students and teachers can adopt strategies to reduce it.