Investigating the Influence of Motivation on Fear of Learning a Foreign Language

Foreign language learning is always an encounter with moments of motivation and fear throughout the process of acquiring a new language. Embarking from that is crucial to understand learners’ perceptions toward their motivation, their fear and the relationship between them in order to enhance the effectiveness of language learning. This quantitative study adopts a questionnaire-based data collection adapted from Gardner’s (2001) motivation constructs and replicated from the instrument of Horwitz et al. (1986). The sample of 351 respondents was collected among undergraduate learners in a public university in Malaysia, which consisted of 2 sections. Based on the findings, in terms of motivation, academic achievement was scored as a strong motivational factor, closely followed by communication’s desire. In contrast, the leading fear-related factor was learners feeling confident to speak in Arabic class and learners’ belief that their peers are more proficient and better for each element studied. Importantly, there is an association between motivation and communication apprehension, whereas no significant association was shown between motivation and fear of negative evaluation, nor between motivation and test anxiety. The results suggest that teachers should foster a more supportive and engaging lesson environment to sustain high motivation, lowering students’ anxiety by understanding their specific fears.