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CURRICULUM, INSTRUCTION, AND PEDAGOGY article

Front. Psychol.

Sec. Educational Psychology

Reflective journal writing and interpreting anxiety: insights from a longitudinal study

Provisionally accepted
  • Shanghai Dianji University, Shanghai, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

This mixed study explores the impact from reflective journal writing upon students' interpreting anxiety. It draws on data sources from students' reflective journals written during the semester as well as two questionnaires of Anxiety Scale for Chinese Interpreting Learners. The study focuses on three dimensions of interpreting anxiety, namely task anxiety, error anxiety and confidence anxiety. Task anxiety has been significantly alleviated over the course, while the other two have not. The cognitive--affective--behavioral intervention mechanism identified in students' reflective journals, functions effectively in mitigating interpreting anxiety. The study also reveals how instructed reflective journals enable students to perceive themselves as self-motivated and sustainable learners. This study holds important pedagogical implications for educators in language teaching and other educational context.

Keywords: Reflective journal writing, interpreting anxiety, Task anxiety, error anxiety, confidence anxiety

Received: 22 Jul 2025; Accepted: 07 Nov 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 WANG. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: ZHENZHEN WANG, tina1116@163.com

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