Foreign Language Anxiety in the Classroom and in on Online Environment

Abstract

This study compared the levels of anxiety that students experienced when taking a foreign language in the classroom with those taking a foreign language at a distance. It also aimed to determine if the student’s academic performance in the course could be predicted by his or her foreign language anxiety level. The sample consisted of 107 undergraduate students (57 traditional classroom students and 50 online students) enrolled in SPAN 101 at Indiana State University in the spring of 2012. Participants were asked to complete the L120 Questionnaire 2 developed by Hurd (2003). The original version of the instrument was used with the online students and a modified version with the classroom students. The results of this study indicated that there was no difference in the levels of foreign language anxiety experienced between classroom and online students. It was concluded that students’ anxiety level was not a good predictor of final test scores in either environment.