Foreign Language Anxiety in Multilingual Students Before and After Corona-Lockdown: A Comparative Analysis

ABSTRACT

The study is devoted to linguistic anxiety of multilingual students in the conditions of adaptation to foreign-language educational environment. The work was carried out in two stages covering the period of study before COVID and after COVID. The main goal was to reveal structural and contents differences of the phenomenon of linguistic anxiety depending on changes in educational conditions and general psychological atmosphere in Lockdown conditions. A total of 120 foreign students studying humanities were interviewed. A comparative analysis of the data obtained showed that the samples did not differ significantly in terms of the overall index of linguistic anxiety and resilience. However, there were differences in the basic constructs. Thus, bilingual students before Corona-Lockdown had the highest test anxiety score. Anxiety about communication apprehension was lower. The situation changed after Corona-Lockdown. Multilingual respondents revealed the maximum anxiety concerning live communication and the minimum concerning testing. Foreign language anxiety and resilience appeared to correlate. Factor analysis of the data for both samples revealed differences in the number of components and their compounds. In the first sample, the components with a communicative orientation prevailed, while in the second sample, the components with an evaluation-test orientation dominated. The study showed the variability of the components that make up the basic subconstructs of linguistic anxiety. The influence of individual cognitive characteristics and styles on linguistic anxiety was suggested. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.