Effects of big five personality traits and fear of negative evaluation on foreign language anxiety

Abstract

© 2019, FACTEACHEREDUCATION. All rights reserved. The paper deals with the effects of Big Five Personality Traits and Fear of Negative Evaluation on Foreign Language Anxiety. The research problem relates to the way in which foreign language anxiety (FLA) is conditioned by certain personality traits when applying the Big Five Model, based on statistically controlled variables such as self-assessment of language mastery, fluency, frequency of reading texts in English, and length of language learning. This problem has been rather neglected in research so far. A sample of 296 students completed three questionnaires: International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg, 2001), Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986), and the brief version of the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (Leary, 1983) translated into Serbian, and three additional questions related to self-assessment of reading comprehension, frequency of reading English texts and verbal fluency. The results show that low levels of Emotional stability were a consistent predictor of high levels of general language anxiety and its types as defined through scores on subscales. Also, students prone to fear of negative evaluation were more inclined to experience FLA. Since the correlation between FNE and Fear of feedback by peers and teachers is only moderate, it can be concluded that FLA is not only a consequence of the general fear of negative evaluation. High Conscientiousness proved to be a specific predictor of the high level of Communication apprehension.