The Role of Self-Regulated Learning Strategies in Mitigating Foreign Language Speaking Anxiety among Pre-Service Teachers in EFL Settings

Foreign language speaking anxiety constitutes a pervasive affective barrier across EFL learning populations worldwide, particularly for pre-service language educators who must master oral proficiency to deliver future classroom instruction. While existing scholarship has explored the interplay between foreign language anxiety and self-regulated learning (SRL) among general student cohorts, few empirical works systematically unpack the multi-dimensional predictive relationships between SRL strategies and speaking anxiety within pre-service teacher populations, nor generate globally applicable pedagogical intervention frameworks. This quantitative correlational study investigates patterns of SRL strategy deployment and speaking anxiety among pre-service English teachers, explores reciprocal associations between these constructs, and identifies core regulatory strategies that alleviate oral performance anxiety. A total of 224 pre-service language educators from public teacher education institutions in China were recruited via stratified convenience sampling. Two validated measurement tools—the English Language Speaking Anxiety Scale (ELSAS) and an adapted Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ)—were administered for primary data collection. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation analysis, and multiple linear regression were run via SPSS 26.0 to test hypothesized relationships. Results indicate that participants reported moderately high overall SRL strategy utilisation and a moderate degree of speaking anxiety. All five SRL dimensions yielded significant negative correlations with oral anxiety, with metacognitive self-regulation, effort regulation, and help-seeking functioning as robust negative predictors of anxious states. The study grounds its analysis in Bandura’s social cognitive theory alongside Zimmerman’s three-phase SRL cycle, clarifying how self-regulatory practice strengthens linguistic self-efficacy to reduce performance apprehension. Though cross-sectional survey data cannot establish causal directions, the empirical evidence generates transferable instructional recommendations for international language teacher education, fills gaps in context-general research on pre-service educators’ affective learning psychology, and provides actionable curriculum optimisation paths to mitigate speaking anxiety in global EFL teacher training programmes.