Alleviating Linguistic and Interactional Anxiety of Non-Native Speakers in Multilingual Communication

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Qin, Peinuan, Peng, Justin, Xu, Zhengtao, Cheng, Jiting, Zhu, Zicheng, Yamashita, Naomi, Lee, Yi-Chieh
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Qin, Peinuan
Peng, Justin
Xu, Zhengtao
Cheng, Jiting
Zhu, Zicheng
Yamashita, Naomi
Lee, Yi-Chieh
author_facet Qin, Peinuan
Peng, Justin
Xu, Zhengtao
Cheng, Jiting
Zhu, Zicheng
Yamashita, Naomi
Lee, Yi-Chieh
contents Non-native speakers (NNSs) frequently encounter speaking difficulties in multilingual communication, where existing approaches have shown promise in facilitating NNSs' comprehension and participation in real-time communication. However, they often overlook providing direct speaking support, where anxiety stemming from linguistic inadequacy and uncertain communication dynamics are core issues. To address this, we introduce an AI tool with translation for real-time speaking support. It also builds a channel for mutual understanding with native speakers (NSs) to mitigate interactional anxiety. Through a within-subjects experiment involving 25 NNS-NS pairs (N = 50) on collaborative tasks, our findings suggest that the tool improved NNSs' speaking self-efficacy, reduced their interactional anxiety, and decreased their workload, particularly for NNSs with below-average language proficiency. Furthermore, NNSs reported a significant sense of support from their NS partners via the mutual understanding channel, and NSs also clearly perceived the NNSs' need for assistance and displayed a strong sense of communicative responsibility. This research underscores the potential of AI support in real-time NNS communication and the importance of promoting mutual understanding, culminating in actionable design insights for future work.
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institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
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spellingShingle Alleviating Linguistic and Interactional Anxiety of Non-Native Speakers in Multilingual Communication
Qin, Peinuan
Peng, Justin
Xu, Zhengtao
Cheng, Jiting
Zhu, Zicheng
Yamashita, Naomi
Lee, Yi-Chieh
Human-Computer Interaction
Non-native speakers (NNSs) frequently encounter speaking difficulties in multilingual communication, where existing approaches have shown promise in facilitating NNSs' comprehension and participation in real-time communication. However, they often overlook providing direct speaking support, where anxiety stemming from linguistic inadequacy and uncertain communication dynamics are core issues. To address this, we introduce an AI tool with translation for real-time speaking support. It also builds a channel for mutual understanding with native speakers (NSs) to mitigate interactional anxiety. Through a within-subjects experiment involving 25 NNS-NS pairs (N = 50) on collaborative tasks, our findings suggest that the tool improved NNSs' speaking self-efficacy, reduced their interactional anxiety, and decreased their workload, particularly for NNSs with below-average language proficiency. Furthermore, NNSs reported a significant sense of support from their NS partners via the mutual understanding channel, and NSs also clearly perceived the NNSs' need for assistance and displayed a strong sense of communicative responsibility. This research underscores the potential of AI support in real-time NNS communication and the importance of promoting mutual understanding, culminating in actionable design insights for future work.
title Alleviating Linguistic and Interactional Anxiety of Non-Native Speakers in Multilingual Communication
topic Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.18171