A Complex Dynamic Systems Approach to Foreign Language Learners’ Anxiety in the Emergency Online Language Classrooms

Abstract

This study explored the foreign language anxiety of learners in the emergency online language classroom under the framework of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory. The data was collected quantitatively and qualitatively to investigate this multifaceted and non-ergodic human characteristic. During the emergency online language learning, twenty-one college students from a university in Vietnam were invited to respond to the FLCAS questionnaire and jot down study journals weekly. Results from data analysis revealed the fluctuation of learners’ anxiety levels when the face-to-face foreign language classroom was shifted to an online platform. They also unfolded some affected factors that unexpectedly emerged due to this transition. Those results complied with the two core themes of CDST, i.e. dynamism and emergence when this theory is applied to research on second language acquisition. They also highlighted the need to prepare language teachers with adequate online language pedagogy.