Which classroom anxiety experience should teachers target first? A network-simulation study of foreign language...

Foreign language classroom anxiety and enjoyment are moderately negatively related, but this relationship has been examined almost entirely at the total score level, and to our knowledge, no published study has asked which specific anxiety experiences are most closely coupled to enjoyment.

Using item-level psychological network analysis and the GGMNIRA simulated node-manipulation framework, we estimated the joint network of eight anxiety items and nine enjoyment items in 3,957 Chinese non-English-major college students and simulated the alleviation of each anxiety node in turn.

Rank-based stability was high (case-dropping correlation stability coefficient ≥ 0.75 for EI, BEI, and the KL rankings). The highest expected influence nodes were shared jokes and topics and teacher support; among anxiety items, panic without preparation speaking ranked highest. The simulations applied two complementary criteria that answer different questions: panic without preparation produced the largest distributional reconfiguration of the enjoyment construct, whereas alleviating nervousness when speaking predicted the largest signed enjoyment gain, the largest model-implied gain among the eight anxiety items. The highest bridge-centrality anxiety node showed negligible simulated effects.

Speaking-related anxiety, particularly the fear of speaking without preparation, is the anxiety experience most closely coupled to enjoyment. Simulated conditioning offers a principled, model-implied complement to centrality when researchers generate hypotheses about which anxiety experiences classroom practice might target first.