Psychological dimensions and foreign language anxiety

Dewaele, Jean-Marc (2017) Psychological dimensions and foreign language anxiety. In: Loewen, S. and Sato, M. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Instructed Second Language Acquisition. Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics. New York, U.S.: Routledge, pp. 433-450. ISBN 9781138936232.

Abstract

Research has uncovered significant links between FLA/FLCA and a range of higher order personality traits (mainly Neuroticism-Emotional Stability, Introversion-Extraversion or Social Initiative, and - to a lesser extent - also Psychoticism, Conscientiousness, Openmindedness, Cultural Empathy). Similarly, relationships have been found between FLA/FLCA and a number of lower-order personality traits or psychological dimensions. These include Trait EI, Perfectionism, Trait anxiety, Unwillingness to communicate, Risk-taking in the FL class, FL class sociability and Speaking self-efficacy. The effect sizes in all studies were typically small or moderate with only a few tending towards “large” (i.e. explaining more than 36% of variance). In other words, there is no doubt that FLA/FLCA is a unique construct, but it is just one node in a large spider web of personality traits and states. To extend the metaphor, one could argue that the spider web itself is gently pushed around by the wind and by flies that may have been captured in the web. In other words, the effects of various psychological variables on levels of FLA/FLCA are not constant but dynamic and often language-specific. On top of these complex interactions come other layers of sociobiographical, situational, and social variables, which could interact among themselves but also with a wide range of psychological variables.

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