Do you feel nervous when you speak English? You are not alone. Many learners feel this way. Scientists call it foreign language anxiety. In 1986, researchers made a test to measure it.

Later, a study with about 20,000 people found that students with more anxiety often got lower grades. But there is good news.

Another study found that students enjoyed class more than they felt worried. Good teachers and friendly classmates can help.

Many learners freeze when they try to speak English, afraid of making mistakes in front of others. In 1986, Horwitz and her colleagues named this feeling foreign language classroom anxiety and created a 33-item questionnaire to measure it. They linked it to fear of speaking with others, test anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation.

In 2019, a meta-analysis of data from about 20,000 learners in 23 countries found that students with higher anxiety tended to get lower scores. Anxiety may take up working memory that is needed to process the language. However, the relationship may also work the other way: being weak at English can make people anxious. Encouragingly, a 2014 study of 1,746 learners found that enjoyment in class was higher than anxiety.

The fear that grips many learners when they try to speak a foreign language has been studied systematically since 1986, when Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope described foreign language classroom anxiety and introduced a 33-item scale to measure it. They related it to communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation, and argued that the language classroom is unusual because it forces adults to express themselves with limited means. A 2019 meta-analysis pooling 97 reports and roughly 20,000 learners from 23 countries found a moderate negative correlation between anxiety and achievement, and another meta-analysis that year reached almost the same result, with listening anxiety especially closely tied to listening performance. One explanation is that anxiety consumes the cognitive resources needed for comprehension and speech.

But these data are mostly cross-sectional, so causality is uncertain. Weak skills may produce anxiety as much as anxiety lowers performance, and some researchers argue that first-language difficulties underlie both. A more hopeful finding came from a 2014 study of 1,746 learners worldwide, in which enjoyment scores exceeded anxiety scores and were linked to teachers and supportive peers. Anxiety is not a fixed trait but something classrooms can reshape.