Social phobia, also known as social anxiety, is a common psychological disorder manifested by feeling extremely upset and nervous in social situations. Currently, there is a certain proportion of people with social phobia in the student population. With the popularization of the online teaching model in business English education, it is of great significance to explore its influence on students’ social phobia.

The study selected two groups of business English students, one for the control group for the traditional face-to-face teaching and the other for the online teaching for the observation group. Student social phobia was assessed by the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS) before and after the course. At the same time, the student’s academic performance and self-evaluation data were also collected. Study data were analyzed using SPSS23.0.

Through analyzing the data, we found that students receiving online teaching had a relatively low level of social phobia of 24 points. They scored significantly lower on the social anxiety questionnaire than the students receiving traditional face-to-face teaching. In addition, the online teaching group also had high academic performance and self-evaluation (P<0.05).

Business English online teaching mode has a positive effect on students’ social phobia. Online teaching provides a relatively low-pressure learning environment, reducing students’ tension during face-to-face communication. This helps students to better participate in classroom activities and improve their learning results. Therefore, in business English education, online teaching mode can be an effective teaching method, especially beneficial for students with social phobia.