The Relationship Between Bilingual Children’s Language Anxiety and Learning Motivation

Abstract

The goal of this study is to examine whether increased relatedness among bilingual children would decrease their language anxiety and improve their self-motivations in learning a foreign language. The relatedness in this study is defined as a innate psychological need for motivations by self-determination theory. Their language performance skills are also being observed under the control of relatedness. This article reviewed several past research on the discussion of language anxiety’s impact on Bilingual children. Existed research showed learning motivations would improve under an increased relatedness and relaxing learning environment. Under this scenario, it would decrease the level of language anxiety, and students’ language performances could be benefited. The outcome of a low level of language anxiety also shows significance in ameliorating students’ positive attitude towards learning a foreign (English) language. This review gives teachers pointers on how to form a proper classroom setting where students are more likely to be motivated to speak out and less likely to be anxious about doing so, both of which may boost their students’ academic achievement.