Foreign Language Anxiety and English Language Achievement in Higher Education: The Mediating Role of Student Engagement

The study aims to examine the mediating role of engagement in the relationship between foreign language anxiety and English language achievement. The research design of the study is prediction research design. The participants consisted of 605 English preparatory class students at Foreign Languages Department at university level. Path analysis was used to analyse the data. The results show that student engagement mediated the relationship between foreign language anxiety and English language achievement. It was concluded that when engagement predicted English language achievement, the effect of foreign language anxiety on English language achievement partially disappeared. It means that the effect of foreign language anxiety on the English language achievement is not able to predict solely by engagement in EFL classroom. Therefore, other mediator variables can be investigated in the relationship between foreign language anxiety and English language achievement.