Foreign language learning as stipulated in the Malaysian Education Blueprint as one of the important facets towards developing a human capital. Upholding this aspiration, Malaysian students at the higher institutions are encouraged to take up a foreign language course throughout their study period. However, learning a foreign language can be a daunting and traumatic experience to many due to several reasons with gender role being one of the most prominent factors. Hence, this quantitative study is done to explore the comparison of fear of learning a foreign language across gender. The study involved 202 students from seven different foreign language courses namely German, Mandarin, Japanese, Arabic, Korean, Italian and French from Universiti Teknologi MARA, UiTM, Shah Alam. A survey adapted from Wenden and Rubin (1987) and Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope (1986) was distributed through Google Form. The data shown that female students experienced greater fear of foreign language learning across all elements under this study namely communication apprehension, fear of negative evaluation and test anxiety, as opposed to their male counterparts. Although male students showed equal level of self-consciousness when speaking, their anxiety seemed to be lower than the females. The study could be an invaluable source to inform foreign language teaching especially in creating a stress-free environment for learning.
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