Students’ foreign language anxiety and self-efficacy beliefs across different levels of university foreign language coursework

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study investigated differences in students’ foreign language anxiety and foreign language self-efficacy related to skill-specific foreign language tasks (i.e., speaking, listening, reading, and writing) across five levels of university foreign language coursework. A total of 206 participants in 12 university Spanish classrooms (ranging from Beginning Spanish I to Intermediate Spanish II) were surveyed for this study. The findings revealed that students who have higher levels of skill-specific foreign language anxieties provided corresponding lower ratings on skill-specific foreign language self-efficacies. Analyses also revealed that students’ ratings for foreign language anxiety for each foreign language-learning skill were not significantly different across the five levels of coursework. However, students’ ratings of foreign language self-efficacies for each foreign language-learning skill were significantly different across different levels of coursework.