**3. Research questions**

As reviewed above, motivation is often considered as a facilitator while FLA a debilitator in the process of becoming bilingual/multilingual. Despite that much research has been done on both motivation and anxiety, little attention has been paid to AOC anxiety or motivation in learning AOC, much less to the interaction between expectancy-value beliefs and FLA [59, 60], though it is quite clear that selfperception (or one's thoughts in general) is an important element associated with anxiety [61]. The limited studies available reveal that learners' foreign language anxiety is negatively correlated with their expectancy and intrinsic value while positively connected with attainment value [60], that anxiety mediates the relation between perceived task value and FL achievement [59], and that increased value appraisal boosts positive emotions in FL learning [58]. In spite of such significance, the relation between domain-specific expectancy for success and subjective task values from the developmental perspective still remains inconclusive [53] and calls for more research. All these motivated the present study, which aimed to investigate the interaction between expectancy-value beliefs (attainment, intrinsic, utility and cost value) and AOC anxiety in bilingual Chinese postgraduates when learning academic oral English. The specific research questions were:


By exploring the changes in and interaction between expectancy-value beliefs and AOC anxiety related to learning academic oral English, this study was expected to help improve the teaching and learning of AOC in bilingual/multilingual students by enhancing their motivation and lowering anxiety. The results would also enrich the current literature.

*The Interaction of Expectancy-Value Beliefs and Anxiety in Learning Academic Oral English… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98181*
