Predictors of Foreign-Language Anxiety: Examining the ...

The remaining two learner variables, FL aptitude and strength of motivation,were not significantly related to FLA. As Table 1 shows, a weak inverse relationshipwas revealed between first-year English major participants’ anxiety scoresand their FL aptitude as measured by performance on the Hungarian LanguageAptitude Test (r = -.143, p = .141). Low negative correlation coefficients were obtainedfor all four subtests of the HUNLAT, however they did not reach a significantlevel. This finding suggests that participants’ FL aptitude was not closelyrelated to how much anxiety they experienced in their university English classesand in other L2 situations. With regard to the potential link between FLA and motivation,the results are very similar to those for FL aptitude in that Pearson correlationsrevealed a very weak association between participants’ anxiety scores andthe strength of their motivation for learning English, as measured by the selfreportquestionnaire (r composite = .085, p = .394), suggesting no significant relationshipbetween the examined motivational characteristics and level of FLA.Multiple regression findingsThis section presents the results of multiple regression analysis examining the simultaneouseffect of proficiency level, FL aptitude, strength of motivation, L2-selfconcept,competitiveness, and perfectionism on FLA. The aim of this procedurewas to determine the relative contribution of these variables to first year Englishmajor participants’ anxiety level. Table 2 shows the initial model, with all sixlearner variables entered in the regression equation, while Table 3 presents the onesuggested as a better model by the backward selection method.Table 2: Initial multiple regression model for predicting FLAVariableStandardized regressioncoefficient (β)t value Squared partial correlationcoefficients (%)Proficiency -.090 -1.088 (n.s.) 1.27FL aptitude .062 .976 (n.s.) 1.02Strength of Motivation -.051 -.742 (n.s.) 0.59L2-self-concept -.676 -8.179** 42.12Competitiveness .278 4.220** 16.24Perfectionism .015 .222 (n.s.) 0.05Model R = .800; R 2 = .640; Adjusted R 2 = .617; Std. Error = 12.52; F = 27.304, p = < .0005** p < .0005The high R value (0.8) for the initial model indicates a strong linear relationshipbetween the six learner variables and FLA. As shown in Table 2, R 2 was 0.640,which means proficiency level, FL aptitude, strength of motivation, L2-selfconcept,competitiveness and perfectionism combined to explain 64% of the variancein first year English majors’ anxiety. According to Cohen’s (1988) criteria forassessing the predictive power of a set of independent variables, this indicates aTóth, Zs. Predictors of foreign-language anxiety 135