The Online World Languages Anxiety Scale (OWLAS)

Abstract

Sadly, anxiety and stress exist all around us. While anxiety has previously been studied in traditional foreign language environments, no information exists about anxiety in an online foreign language environment. Without having a detailed understanding of potential problems in an online environment, educators, administrators, and course designers would not be able to help struggling, suffering students. Thus, the purpose of this seven-participant pilot study was to develop a more refined understanding of foreign language anxiety in the online learning environment. In some respects, the results of this study confirm what foreign language educators already know: students prefer writing rather than speaking, interacting with the instructor rather than with peers, and keeping up with the work is sometimes a challenge. Additionally, if students don’t know basic grammatical elements in their native language, there may be issues in the target language. Yet, researchers can now begin to understand additional components of anxiety that were not examined previously in online foreign language courses in a more nuanced manner.