Foreign language anxiety and foreign language self-efficacy: a meta-analysis

As many students have foreign language (FL) anxiety, understanding its potential harm is critical to informing suitable counter-measures. According to social cognitive theory and control-value theory, students with more foreign language (FL) anxiety than other students might have lower FL self-efficacy (which can hinder their FL learning and use) but past studies showed mixed results. Hence, this meta-analysis examined 43 effect sizes from 37 studies of 26,589 students to determine the overall relation between FL anxiety and FL self-efficacy. The results showed a strong negative link between FL anxiety and FL self-efficacy (r = -.704). Moderator analyses showed this link does not differ across school levels, FL anxiety types, measures of FL self-efficacy, language distance, gender, national income, publication year or publication type—suggesting a robust negative link across different contexts. These results suggest the importance of using effective instructional practices/interventions to reduce learners’ language anxiety and enhance their self-efficacy.