Investigating foreign language anxiety of Chinese Dongxiang ethnic group: a language conflict perspective

Abstract The effect of being multilingual on learners’ foreign language anxiety (FLA) is not always clear-cut. In view of related controversy on the issue and the negative impact of language conflict on learners’ foreign language learning in multilingual areas, this study takes trilingual learners – the Chinese Dongxiang ethnic group – as the subject, and adopts a mixed methods approach to explore their FLA and how language conflict in learners’ environment affects FLA. The study finds that FLA of Dongxiang undergraduates is much higher than that of Han undergraduates with the same English proficiency level. Besides, with the Dongxiang language, Chinese, English, and Arabic serving different functions in the participants’ learning-lives, the potential conflicts between the Dongxiang language and Chinese, Arabic and English, Chinese and English are contributing factors in triggering participants’ FLA. Based on the results, some pedagogical implications are discussed in light of language planning.