Language mindsets and gender as predictors of foreign language classroom anxiety among university students

Anxiety negatively impacts the well-being and performance of university students. For language instructors, of particular relevance is a specific form of learner anxiety: foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA). This study investigated the extent to which language mindsets predicted FLCA among a sample of 292 students taking courses in eight different languages at a large university in Finland. Multiple regression analysis showed that two factors of language mindsets, entity beliefs about second language (L2) learning and entity beliefs about a critical period for L2 acquisition, combined with gender, moderately predicted the variance in students’ reported FLCA. The results indicated that female students were statistically significantly more anxious than their male counterparts about foreign languages. Furthermore, they were over two times more likely to report high levels of FLCA as measured by the short form of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale. The study offers important insights into the link between language mindsets and FLCA in the understudied context of Europe, with previous research focusing predominantly on North America and Asia. The findings also hold practical implications for the design of FLCA interventions and for research on gendered experiences of foreign language anxiety.