Frontiers in Psychology (Jan 2023)

Impostor Phenomenon and L2 willingness to communicate: Testing communication anxiety and perceived L2 competence as mediators

  • Kay Brauer,
  • Elyas Barabadi,
  • Elham Aghaee,
  • Fakieh Alrabai,
  • Majid Elahi Shirvan,
  • Rebekka Sendatzki,
  • Linnea Marie Vierow

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1060091
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13

Abstract

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The Impostor Phenomenon (IP) describes experiences of perceived intellectual fraudulence despite the existence of objectively good performances, and it is a robust predictor of experiences and outcomes in higher education. We examined the role of the IP in the domain of second language (L2) acquisition by testing its relations with a robust predictor of L2 use, willingness to communicate (WTC). We collected self-reports of 400 adult Iranian L2 learners and tested the associations between the IP and WTC. As expected, we found a negative association between IP and WTC (r = −0.13). When testing a mediation model with perceived competence and communication anxiety as parallel mediators, we found evidence for full mediation via perceived competence. Our findings show the importance of considering self-evaluations in the domain of L2 acquisition. Further implications and limitations are discussed.

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