The DOI matches its Crossref record.
An Empirical Study on Anxiety and Motivation in English as a Foreign Language
Open accessAbstract
Perceived to be two important affective variables, anxiety and motivation have been found to be highly correlated with second/foreign language acquisition. In order to examine the relationship between achievement motivation, test anxiety and students' English proficiency, the present study investigated 131 graduate students of science at a university in Mainland China. It was found that test anxiety was significantly correlated with the students' English proficiency and the cloze test. A positive relationship was also found between the students' English proficiency and achievement motivation in terms of both motivation to approach success (Ms) and motivation to avoid failure (Mf). Again, these two motivations were significantly related to the cloze test. In addition, differences in test anxiety and achievement motivation between male and female students were identified. Female students reported to be more test-anxious than their male counterparts. Male students were high in Ms whereas females were high in Mf. Finally, suggestions for minimizing students' test anxiety and enhancing motivation for achievement in foreign language learning were provided, and some pedagogical implications were discussed.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
No references could be resolved yet.
Research works printed but not linked: 28
- Aida, Y. (1994). Examination of Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope's construct of foreign language anxiety: The case of students of Japanese. The Modern Language Journal, 78, 155-168.
- Anderson, S. B., & Sauser, Jr., W. I. (1995). Measurement of test anxiety: An overview. In C. D. Spielberger & P. R. Vagg (Eds.), Test anxiety theory, assessment, and treatment (pp. 15-33). London: Taylor & Francis.
- Atkinson, J. W. (1966). Motivational determinants of risk-taking behavior. In J. W. Atkinson & N. T. Feather (Eds.), A theory of achievement motivation (pp. 11- 29). New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
- Atkinson, J. W., & Litwin, G. H. (1966). Achievement motive and test anxiety conceived as motive to approach success and motive to avoid failure. In J. W. Atkinson & N. T. Feather (Eds.), A theory of achievement motivation (pp. 75- 91). New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
- Benjamin, M., McKeachie, M., Lin, Y. G., & Hollinges, D. (1981). Test anxiety: Deficits in information processing. Journal of Educational Psychology, 73, 816-824.
- Dörnyei, Z. (1994). Motivation and motivating in the foreign language classroom. The Modern Language Journal, 78, 273-274.
- Dörnyei, Z. (2001). New themes and approaches in second language motivation research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 21, 43-59.
- Ehrman, M. E. (1996). An exploration of adult language learner motivation, self- efficacy, and anxiety. In R. Oxford (Ed.), Language learning motivation: Pathways to the new century (pp. 81-103). Honolulu, HI: Second Language Teaching & Curriculum Center, University of Hawai'i at Manoa.
- Elliot, A., & McGregor, H. (1999). Test anxiety and hierarchical model of approach and avoidance achievement motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 628-644.
- Gardner, R. C., Moorcroft, R., & Metford, J. (1989). Second language learning in an immersion program: Factors influencing acquisition and retention. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 8, 287-305.
- Hancock, D. R. (2001). Effects of test anxiety and evaluative threat on students' achievement and motivation. Journal of Educational Research, 94, 284-290.
- K. M. Bailey & D. Nunan (Eds.), Voices from the language classroom (pp. 248-282). New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Horwitz, K. (2001). Language anxiety and achievement. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 21, 112-126.
- Horwitz, E. K., Horwitz, M. B., & Cope, J. (1986). Foreign language classroom anxiety. The Modern Language Journal, 70, 125-132.
- Jegede, J. (1994). Influence of motivation and gender on secondary school students' academic performance in Nigeria. The Journal of Social Psychology 134, 695-697.
- Litwin, G. H. (1966). Achievement motivation, expectancy of success, and risk- taking behavior. In J. W. Atkinson & N. T. Feather (Eds.), A theory of achievement motivation (pp. 103-115). New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
- MacIntyre, P. D., & Gardner, R. (1991). Methods and results in the study of anxiety and language learning: A review of the literature. Language Learning, 41, 85-117.
- Oh, J. (1992). The effects of L2 reading assessment methods on anxiety level. TESOL Quarterly, 26, 172-176.
- Oxford, R. (1999). Anxiety and language learner: New insights. In J. Arnold (Ed.), Affect in language learning (pp. 260-278). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
- Rachman, S. (1998). Anxiety. Hove, East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press.
- Saito, Y., Horwitz, E. K., & Garza, T. (1999). Foreign language reading anxiety. The Modern Language Journal, 83, 202-218.
- Scovel, T. (1978). Effect of affect in foreign language learning: A review of the anxiety research. Language Learning, 28, 129-142.
- Spielberger, C. D. (1972). Anxiety as an emotional state. In C. D. Spielberger (Ed.), Anxiety: Current trends in theory and research: Vol. 1 (pp. 3-19). New York: Academic Press.
- Stein, A. H., & Bailey, M. M. (1973). The socialization of achievement orientation in females. Psychological Bulletin, 80, 345-366.
- Sun, Y. M. (1992). Motivational psychology. Nanjing: Nanjing Normal University Press.
- Tremblay, P. F., & Gardner, R. (1995). Expanding the motivational construct in language learning. The Modern Language Journal, 79, 505-518.
- Young, D. J. (1991). The relationship between anxiety and foreign language oral proficiency ratings. In E. K. Horwitz & D. J. Young (Eds.), Language anxiety: From theory to classroom implications (pp. 57-63). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
- Zeidner, M. (1998). Test anxiety: The state of art. New York: Plenum Press.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
An Exploration of Foreign Language Anxiety and English Learning Motivation
Liu, M., & Huang, W. (2011) · Education Research International · doi:10.1155/2011/493167 · Cited by 274
“In addition, achievement motivation is found to be positively correlated to risk taking, persistence, and competence while negatively correlated to test anxiety [39, 40].”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- HAO, M.
- Venue
- Asian Journal of English Language Teaching
- Published
- 2004-05-01
- Volume
- 14
- Pages
- 89-104
- ISSN
- 1026-2652 (ISSN-L)
- 2333-7192
- OpenAlex
- W3088480959
- Cited by
- 24
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2023: 2 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 2 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 0.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Asian Journal of English Language Teaching (publishedVersion)
- i-manager’s Journal on English Language Teaching
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Education, Achievement, and Giftedness
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Second Language Acquisition and Learning
- Keywords
- test anxiety, achievement motivation, English as a foreign language, English proficiency, cloze test, gender differences, graduate students, affective factors in language learning
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: An Empirical Study on Anxiety and Motivation in English as a Foreign Language. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.65961/ajelt-2004-1-005
- The paper
- HAO, M. (2004). An Empirical Study on Anxiety and Motivation in English as a Foreign Language. Asian Journal of English Language Teaching. https://doi.org/10.65961/ajelt-2004-1-005
