Additive, not conditional: Text difficulty, self-efficacy, and classroom climate as predictors of reading anxiety in Indonesian EFL higher education

Abstract

Foreign language reading anxiety (FLRA) is a persistent affective barrier in EFL contexts, yet research in Indonesia has remained largely descriptive, ranking the sources of anxiety without testing whether they predict FLRA inferentially or whether learner and classroom resources alter their impact. This study addressed both questions through moderated multiple regression with 178 EFL undergraduates (semesters 3–6) at a university in Lampung, Indonesia, using six adapted instruments. The central finding was not the one anticipated. Neither reading self-efficacy nor classroom supportive climate moderated any relationship between text difficulty and FLRA (all p ≥ .53; ΔR² = .002), and a sensitivity analysis confirmed that the design could detect interactions of f² ≥ .045, so conditional effects of practical magnitude can be excluded although smaller ones cannot. Instead, both resources operated additively rather than conditionally, reducing FLRA directly and uniformly (self-efficacy b = −0.221; classroom climate b = −0.188) and adding 10.4% of explained variance. Among the predictors, performance worry dominated (b = 0.389, f² = .350), outweighing vocabulary difficulty and topic familiarity; together the three explained 46.4% of FLRA variance. Confidence and a supportive climate therefore appear to lower the anxiety baseline without blunting specific text-difficulty triggers. Indonesian EFL instruction should reduce the evaluative stakes of reading tasks directly rather than relying on affective resources to buffer them.