Foreign language anxiety (FLA) has already been recognized as an important affective factor in foreign language learning and acquisition, with significant impact on language learning outcomes in both traditional and e-learning environments. Additionally, gender has been established as a significant factor that influences self-perceived levels of language anxiety among university students, though the overall findings still remain inconclusive. The aim of the current research was to examine the effect of gender in predicting the overall levels of FLA among online learners of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). The research was conducted on a sample of 171 Croatian undergraduate university students of Economics, Business economics and Informatics attending mandatory online ESP classes. The research instrument used included an adapted questionnaire on FLA in the context of online ESP learning and a demographic questionnaire designed to collect demographic and other background data relevant to participants’ English language learning. We wanted to determine whether the participants differ in the overall levels of foreign language anxiety with regard to gender, examine the relationship between total levels of FLA, its underlying components, demographic variables and other background information for both male and female participants, and determine which of the independent variables represent the best predictors of FLA among online ESP learners with regard to the variable of gender. The main results indicate that female language learners experience significantly greater levels of FLA in online ESP classes in comparison to their male counterparts.

Further, for both male and female participants, the total level of FLA shows statistically significant positive correlations with the five underlying factors of language anxiety:
(1) speech anxiety,
(2) evaluation anxiety,
(3) online ESP class context,
(4) anxiety of talking to native speakers, and
(5) lack of motivation for online class attendance.

In addition, the overall level of FLA shows statistically significant correlations with the variables of self-assessed English language proficiency, self-assessed pronunciation proficiency, and frequency of English language use for both genders as well. In contrast, the total level of FLA shows statistically significant positive correlation with length of learning English only among female learners of ESP, but not among male participants. Finally, multiple regression analysis shows that the five factors of FLA represent statistically significant predictors of the total level of FLA for both genders. However, in addition to five factors of FLA, frequency of English language use emerges as the most reliable predictor of FLA among male participants, while self-assessed pronunciation proficiency is proved to be a statistically significant predictor of FLA among female participants. Such results confirm that gender indeed moderated the predictive relation between independent variables and the total level of FLA among the present sample of online ESP learners. The implications of gender differences in predicting language anxiety among online English language learners and adopting appropriate pedagogical interventions are discussed.

Keywords: Foreign language anxiety (FLA), English for Specific Purposes (ESP), gender differences, online language teaching, e-learning, university students.