Foreign Language Anxiety and Individualism-Collectivism Culture: A Top-Down Approach for a Country/Regional-Level Analysis

Abstract

This study explored how foreign language anxiety in class relates to individualism-collectivism culture. Additionally, to serve as a guideline for foreign language anxiety assessment, the study determined a normative score of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), which is well known and frequently applied for foreign language anxiety examination. After conducting a literature search identifying 106 studies in 35 countries/regions, a top-down approach was used to analyze aggregate FLCAS mean scores by country/region and examine relationships between the FLCAS score and the rating of individualism-collectivism cultural dimension from Hofstede’s cultural index. This relationship was significant for higher education institutions but insignificant for all institutions and for elementary to high schools. The FLCAS normative score was 94.82, slightly lower than the theoretical midpoint of 99. The findings have implications for educators, since university/college/graduate students in countries/regions with stronger collectivism had higher foreign language anxiety.

The Role of Blended Learning on Moderating Self-Motivation to Mitigate Foreign Language Anxiety among EFL Students

“…In fact, feeling of tension, apprehension, fearfulness, and worry in language class, which had been pointed to greatly influence e-learner's progress in mastering the target language, are all critical factors that limit the usefulness of e-learning (Tuti, 2018) Linguistic anxiety can be defined as a cognitive state that occurs during the use of a second language, resulting in a deficit in linguistic communication. This state of anxiety involves three related states that become evident during performance, which are perceptual communicative anxiety, experimental anxiety and fear of negative evaluation (Toyama and Yamazaki, 2022). Communication Perception Anxiety is a type of shyness, which is accompanied by fear or anxiety about communicating with people, and it manifests itself in several manifestations, including difficulty speaking in groups or difficulty making a speech, or difficulty listening to or learning a verbal message (Chen, 2019).Experimental anxiety is a type of cognitive anxiety that arises from a fear of failure, such as becoming apprehensive about the consequences of insufficient performance during a particular test or assessment (Zuardi, Crippa, Hallak and Gorayeb, 2013).…”

A Meta-Analysis of Test-Retest Reliability in Language Anxiety Research: Is Language Anxiety Stable or Variable?

“…Therefore, as Horwitz (2001) proposes, language anxiety may “vary in different cultural groups” (p. 116) and this anxiety “has different triggers and manifestations in different cultures” (Horwitz, 2016, p. 71). This proposition was partially supported in Toyama and Yamazaki’s (2022) study of the relationship between language anxiety and culture. Based on the FLCAS scores and the ratings of Hofstede’s (Hofstede et al, 2010) individualism-collectivism cultural dimensions, Toyama and Yamazaki reported a significant relationship for higher education institutions.…”

“…In addition, there seemed to be more variation among the correlations in the three studies than in Horwitz’s (1986) validation study, which found the general language classroom anxiety scores (as measured by the FLCAS ) to show a similar relationship with Spanish ( r =−.49) and French ( r =−.54) final grades. Horwitz’s finding bears relevance to Toyama and Yamazaki’s (2022) investigation of how individualism-collectivism culture relates to language anxiety. Toyama and Yamazaki identified 106 studies in 35 countries/regions and did not find a significant relationship between culture and language anxiety for all educational institutions and elementary to high schools.…”

“…Since the 1980s, language research has witnessed significant advances in the measurement of anxiety. Although Horwitz et al developed the now widely used FLCAS (Toyama & Yamazaki, 2021, 2022) in response to the conflicting results from earlier anxiety research, questions have been raised about the appropriateness of using this scale to measure anxiety about specific language skills. Therefore, skill-based anxiety scales have been developed to address this concern (e.g., Cheng, 2004; Elkhafaifi, 2005; Saito et al, 1999; Woodrow, 2006).…”

“It’s not Easy to Speak English”: International Students’ Language Anxiety in Academic Intercultural Communication Practices

“…Cultural differences can cause language anxiety. In most research, speaking anxiety in relation to cultural differences stems from, one of them, different accepted cultural thoughts (Toyama & Yamazaki, 2022). Tseng (2012) asserts that the more unfamiliar the students to the culture of target language, the more they experience anxiety in the target language as the cultural background of speaker and the cultural background of target language can be very different, such as the using of vocabularies.…”