Escaping the anxious classroom: the exploration of using educational escape rooms to mitigate foreign language anxiety

High school English learners often face intense Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) due to examination pressures. This paper presents the design and implementation of ‘EngEERs’ (English Educational Escape Rooms), an innovative pedagogical framework that employs a ‘narrative-driven game loop’ to mitigate FLA. The intervention integrates immersion, collaborative puzzle-solving, and a failure-tolerant structure to reframe language use as a tool for narrative progression rather than academic performance. A quasi-experimental study involving 62 Chinese high school students was conducted to assess the framework's potential. Results from the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale indicated a statistically significant reduction in overall FLA within the experimental group, with notable decreases in Fear of Negative Evaluation and Test Anxiety. These preliminary findings provide concrete guidance and highlight the potential of EngEERs as a feasible and engaging approach for practitioners seeking to foster low-anxiety language learning environments.