Multivariate Differences in Linguistic Risk-Taking and Communicative Dispositions Across Gender and Academic Year among Vietnamese EFL Undergraduates

Linguistic risk-taking constitutes a central behavioral mechanism through which learners engage in second language communication, yet evidence on its variation across learner groups in Vietnamese tertiary education remains limited. This study examined whether linguistic risk-taking and related communicative dispositions differ across gender and academic year among Vietnamese university EFL learners. Using a quantitative cross-sectional design, data were collected from 350 non-English-major undergraduates enrolled in English-speaking courses at a private international university in Vietnam. Five dependent variables were operationalized as composite scores: linguistic risk-taking, willingness to communicate, foreign language anxiety, L2 self-efficacy, and tolerance of ambiguity. A two-way factorial multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted with gender and year of study as fixed factors. The results revealed a statistically significant multivariate effect of year of study (Wilks’ Λ = .861, F(15, 933.47) = 3.47, p < .001, partial η² = .049), whereas the multivariate effect of gender and the interaction between gender and year were not significant. Follow-up analyses indicated that year of study significantly influenced linguistic risk-taking, willingness to communicate, and L2 self-efficacy, with Year 3 and Year 4 students reporting higher linguistic risk-taking than Year 1 students. These findings indicate that linguistic risk-taking develops progressively across undergraduate study and reflects accumulated communicative experience rather than demographic differences, supporting its interpretation as a developmentally sensitive behavioral outcome in tertiary EFL contexts.