Foreign language anxiety and fear of negative evaluation in the Greek university classroom

This study aims to investigate the major reported sources provoking language anxiety and fear of negative evaluation in a group of Greek university students. Language performance was taken into consideration in the analysis of the data. The data were submitted to factor analysis and the results indicated that the main stressors include communication apprehension felt toward teachers, peers and native speakers, fear of tests and of speaking in class and also teachers’ questions and corrections. The findings also pointed to a negative correlation among language anxiety, fear of negative evaluation and language performance. Additionally, the results revealed a significant effect for language anxiety and fear of negative evaluation attributable to gender.