Complex Dynamic Systems Theory and Language Anxiety

This chapter intends to focus on the question of how researchers can tap into the dynamics of language anxiety. To this end, unlike the previous three chapters each containing a summary of one study, this chapter presents several pieces of my colleagues’ and my work done on investigating the dynamics of language anxiety. In the first part of the chapter, I elaborate on a theoretical model based on CDST considerations of the development of language classroom anxiety; in the second part, I refer to relevant works done on the micro timescale with a special focus on a Hungarian study; the last part of the chapter, through a macro perspective, recounts a longitudinal study on the change in language anxiety over two academic years among Hungarian high school language learners.