Anxiety and enjoyment in young language learners: a systematic review finds only five studies

Primary school children learning a second language tend to feel less enjoyment when they feel more anxiety in the classroom, but the evidence base for that conclusion among six-to-twelve-year-olds is strikingly thin. A systematic review published in the Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education screened 1,418 unique records and found only five studies that met its inclusion criteria, with the earliest published in 2018. The authors, led by Nicholas Wei Kiat Seet, describe the literature as emerging but limited, and they caution that their findings have restricted generalizability and should be interpreted with some caution.

The team deliberately separated second language, or L2, studies from foreign language, or FL, studies, arguing that the interchangeable use of these terms in past research has been a significant obstacle for accurate contextual interpretation and generalization of findings. During screening, the authors observed that most recent studies still use the terms L2 and FL interchangeably despite past attempts at delineation, and they strongly recommend that future studies make a clear distinction between the two using working definitions as a foundation.

To organize the evidence, the reviewers applied Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Model as an analytical framework, sorting the factors associated with children’s language emotions into proximal processes operating in the immediate classroom microsystem and indirect distal processes arising from more distant layers such as the macrosystem. The database search covered five major online databases between 1986 and 2025, supplemented by manual reference searches. Only studies involving primary school-aged students aged six to twelve were included, and the small final sample reflects how little research attention this age group has received compared with secondary and university populations.

The central finding was preliminary evidence for a generally mild-to-moderate negative relationship between L2 enjoyment and L2 anxiety. The five included studies came from socio-culturally disparate societies, Hong Kong and Belgium, and involved different target languages, English and Dutch, yet they reached a general consensus that the two emotions move in opposite directions within the L2 classroom. The reviewers describe this as a significant dual-affective proximal process within one of primary school-aged students’ most prevalent immediate environments.

Importantly, the review found no causal relationship between L2 anxiety and enjoyment. This absence was attributed to the non-experimental study designs of all five included studies, as well as a tendency in the literature to group both positive emotions, such as L2 enjoyment, and negative emotions, such as L2 anxiety and L2 boredom, together in analyses of outcomes including L2 engagement, L2 motivation and varying L2 proficiencies. The reviewers stress that the reported relationship is associational, and the review’s conclusion likewise states that there was no clear evidence of a direct causal effect.

One included study complicated the picture. Tsang and Yeung identified an implied positive, and therefore contrasting, relationship for a small subgroup of participants from a Hong Kong sample who scored mild-to-moderately high on L2 anxiety and high on L2 enjoyment. The reviewers interpret this subgroup as a possible case of facilitative anxiety, in which mild-to-moderate anxiety acted facilitatively rather than in a typical debilitative role, suggesting that other factors, such as individual characteristics, may be at play. They note that when individuals place value in their language learning, some amount of anxiety will most likely accompany positive emotions such as L2 enjoyment. The reviewers also point to earlier work among older learners showing that the relationship between the two emotions can be complex, continuous and highly dynamic, fluctuating across tasks and time periods, and even positive in some foreign language contexts, though with small effect sizes.

Within the classroom microsystem, L2 classroom disengagement emerged as a main contributing factor to both L2 enjoyment and L2 anxiety, identified across four of the included studies. Greater disengagement in various forms, such as non-immersive pedagogical environments and L2 boredom, was typically associated with lower L2 enjoyment and greater L2 anxiety, which in turn predicted lower overall L2 proficiency. The reviewers suggest that L2 anxiety likely plays a larger but strictly complementary role alongside L2 enjoyment, forming a dynamic dual-affective mechanism in the classroom that influences L2 learning outcomes among primary school-aged students. They add that these findings largely mirror the literature among older-aged students, where lower enjoyment alongside greater anxiety was associated with greater classroom disengagement across both L2 and FL contexts, and that certain inhibitory behaviours such as daydreaming and rumination during classes are exceptionally common among primary school students, so the direct effect of classroom disengagement on this age group is likely greater than on older students.

At the macrosystem level, the review found that societal attitudes towards the target language were associated with children’s emotions in the classroom. Drawing on the Belgian study, the reviewers reported that comparatively negative societal attitudes among French-speaking Belgian primary school students towards learning their own L2 were associated with lower L2 enjoyment and greater L2 anxiety. The researchers behind that study noted that the difference in both emotions was statistically more noticeable in secondary school age groups, but the identified marginal difference among primary school-aged students was highlighted as a significant paradoxical finding with possible implications for other societies with a similar L2 context. Because younger-aged students are unlikely to have direct interactions with general societal attitudes, the reviewers suggest that this macrosystemic influence functions indirectly through key figures in the child’s immediate environment, such as parents or teachers, and their attitudes towards the target language.

By contrast, the review found no clear consensus on the role of passive parental factors, such as parental education and socioeconomic status, which sit within the exosystem of the bioecological model. The reviewers attribute the inconclusive findings to the multiple different operationalizations of SES across studies, including maternal education, paternal education and household income, and suggest that the indirect distal interaction between these factors and younger-aged students’ feelings of L2 anxiety and enjoyment is likely not strong enough to enact significant influence in the classroom. They call for more research from L2-dominant societies such as Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, using a standardized measure for SES, to provide a better overall understanding of this association.

The review’s limitations are considerable. With only five included studies, and only two societies analysed, generalization to all societies with L2 contexts is difficult, and the reclassification of included studies as L2 contexts was based on the authors’ own interpretation, which may not align with other studies. The reviewers also observed a gap in research attention: no studies among the included Hong Kong research examined attitudes towards English as an L2, despite Hong Kong’s current Biliteracy and Trilingualism education policy. For practice and policy, the authors recommend that educators, curriculum developers and policymakers prioritize nurturing greater L2 enjoyment while mitigating L2 anxiety by addressing classroom disengagement, for example through interactive learning activities such as group-based problem-solving, role-playing and creative drama, and through opportunities for direct interaction with the target language’s culture. They also suggest professional development courses to help educators identify physical signs of L2 anxiety among students, greater attention to L2 literacy curricula covering reading and writing, and a preference for direct student-oriented interventions over home-based support mechanisms given the inconclusive SES findings. For future research, they recommend longitudinal designs to examine cohort effects and to test the effectiveness of metacognitive interventions over time, alongside clearer distinctions between L2 and FL contexts in study design and reporting.

Subject of Research: The relationship between second language anxiety and enjoyment among primary school-aged students

Article Title: Second language anxiety and enjoyment among primary school-aged students: a systematic review

Article References: Seet, N. W. K., Kadir, M. A. A., Suárez, L., & Dillon, D. (2026). Second language anxiety and enjoyment among primary school-aged students: a systematic review. Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education, 11(1), Article 85. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-026-00460-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40862-026-00460-2

Keywords: second language anxiety, second language enjoyment, primary school students, systematic review, Bronfenbrenner bioecological model, classroom disengagement, societal attitudes, socioeconomic status, L2 proficiency, language learning emotions, Second, language