Work

Birds of a feather (might not) flock together: Exploring the complex interplay of motivation, autonomy and positive emotions in predicting anxiety levels in Hungarian secondary school language learners

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Due to its importance in second/foreign language (L2) learning, anxiety appears to be one of the most important individual differences (IDs). Still, learners’ experiences of anxiety tend to vary considerably, so we set out to investigate the anxiety levels, reported in our large-scale quantitative study involving 1,152 secondary school language learners in Hungary, by different learner groups. Cluster analysis was employed to create learner groups with different profiles, which were based on the learners’ motivation, autonomy and selected positive emotions, that is, hope, pride, enjoyment and curiosity, thereby forming three profiles for autonomy and four groups for motivation and positive emotions. The resulting groupings were then entered into a univariate general linear model (GLM) to predict the anxiety levels of the learners. The results of the three-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed significant main effects for motivation, autonomy and positive emotions, two significant second-order interactions between motivation and autonomy and motivation and positive emotions, and a significant third-order interaction between motivation, autonomy and learners’ positive emotions. It appears that learners’ motivation, autonomy, and positive emotion profiles jointly determined the level of anxiety experienced by them. The most important implication of our results is that simple linear relationships are untenable when it comes to describing the interplay of these individual differences both concerning the theoretical advancement of our knowledge as well as the pedagogical knowledge of English teachers.

Source: Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching

DOI: 10.14746/ssllt.49262

Authors: Ágnes Albert, Kata Csizér

Institution: Eötvös Loránd University

Language: English

Topic: EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning

Subfield: Language and Linguistics

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: diamond

Funders: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem