Interactions between age to start learning English, high school, and language proficiency on EFL graduate students' anxiety

Foreign language anxiety (FLA) has been studied in relation to extra-lingual factors. However, little attention has been focused on some modulatory factors such as age to start learning a foreign language (ASLFL), high school (HS), and language proficiency. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the effects of ASLFL, HS, and English proficiency and their interactions on the FLA among 306 graduate students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in the Chinese culture context. The results showed that urban HS students exhibited significantly lower communication anxiety and test anxiety compared to county and rural HS students; English proficiency had a significant negative correlation with FLA. Moreover, county HS students who began learning English between the ages of 12 and 15 had higher communication anxiety than those who started earlier (ages 6-11). In addition, the latter who had lower English proficiency displayed higher test anxiety and anxiety about English class. These findings have important implications for English learning pedagogy.