Attentional hierarchies: how medium of instruction and gender are associated with glossophobia in Pakistani higher education

Previous Medium of instruction (PMoI) and Gender as structural determinants of glossophobia have been understudied in the multilingual educational setting where language proficiency overlaps with identity construction. To explore the relationship between PMoI, gender, and glossophobia among higher education students of Pakistan, we surveyed 246 undergraduates from six Pakistani universities using the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS), adapted to capture phenomenological experiences, and conducted semi-structured interviews to analyze their experiences (n = 30). Chi-square tests were used to test the relationship between PMoI/gender and anxiety dimensions (communication apprehension, fear of negative evaluation, and test anxiety). However, in contrast to proficiency suppositions, English-PMoI students reported 1.6× greater anxiety than Urdu-PMoI students, which was due to the identity preservation pressures instead of language shortcomings. Female participants realized as 2.3 times more afraid of negative evaluation, and this tendency was associated with the patriarchal surveillance relationships. The results of the qualitative analysis demonstrated that the intersection of PMoI-gender conditions four different types of anxiety. The study proposes new theoretical frameworks, such as attentional hierarchies, which provide evidence for educational socialization rewiring the threat perception, and presents the first population-scale study of the so-called English-medium anxiety paradox in South Asia. The results require PMoI-specific pedagogical interventions and policy changes to address linguistic hegemony in plurilingual classes and its use in other contexts of plurilingual education worldwide.