Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This study reports on the development and assessment of a new 30-item Multidimensional Language Class Anxiety Scale which is designed to assess foreign language learners’ anxiety regarding four language skills (listening, reading, writing, and speaking) and testing. In Study 1, the initial items were piloted with 323 students studying English as a foreign language at three different universities in Turkey. This informed a revised version of the questionnaire which was subsequently administered to 701 students at three different Turkish universities. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that a bifactor model with correlated residual variance yielded a better fit for the data in both studies than the other four models tested. The overall results provided preliminary evidence for the reliability and validity of the data collected using the new scale. Directions for future research and implications for foreign language teaching and learning are discussed.

Keywords

foreign language anxiety English as a foreign language scale development skill-based approach psychoeducational assessment

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Aida

(1994). Examination of Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope’s construct of foreign language anxiety: The case of students of Japanese. The Modern Language Journal, 78, 155-168. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.1994.tb02026.x

Brown

T. A.

(2014). Confirmatory factor analysis for applied research. New York, NY: Guilford.

Cheng

(2017). Development and preliminary validation of four brief measures of L2 language-skill-specific anxiety. System, 68, 15-25. doi:10.1016/j.system.2017.06.009

Dörnyei

Ryan

(2015). The psychology of the language learner revisited. New York, NY: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315779553

Dunn

T. J.

Baguley

Brunsden

(2014). From alpha to omega: A practical solution to the pervasive problem of internal consistency estimation. British Journal of Psychology, 105, 399-412. doi:10.1111/bjop.12046

Horwitz

E. K.

(2017). On the misreading of Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope (1986) and the need to balance anxiety research and the experiences of anxious language learners. In Gkonou

Daubney

Dewaele

(Eds.), New insights into language anxiety: Theory, research and educational implications (pp. 31-47). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Horwitz

E. K.

Horwitz

M. B.

Cope

(1986). Foreign language classroom anxiety. The Modern Language Journal, 70, 125-132. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.1986.tb05256.x

Bentler

P. M.

(1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 1-55. doi:10.1080/10705519909540118

In’nami

(2006). The effects of test anxiety on listening test performance. System, 34, 317-340. doi:10.1016/j.system.2006.04.005

10.

Joy

J. L.

(2013). The altitude of test anxiety among second language learners. Language Testing in Asia, 3(1), 10. doi:10.1186/2229-0443-3-10

11.

MacIntyre

P. D.

Gardner

R. C.

(1989). Anxiety and second-language learning: Toward a theoretical clarification. Language Learning, 39, 251-275. doi:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1989.tb00423.x

12.

McNeish

(2017). Thanks coefficient alpha, we’ll take it from here. Psychological Methods, 23, 412-433. doi:10.1037/met0000144

13.

Muthén

L. K.

Muthén

B. O.

(2014). Mplus user’s guide (7th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Author.

14.

Nunnally

J. C.

Bernstein

I. H.

(1994). Psychological theory. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

15.

Panayides

Walker

M. J.

(2013). Evaluating the psychometric properties of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale for Cypriot senior high school EFL students: The Rasch measurement approach. Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 9, 493-516. doi:10.5964/ejop.v9i3.611

16.

Park

(2014). Factor analysis of the foreign language classroom anxiety scale in Korean learners of English as a foreign language. Psychological Reports, 115, 261-275. doi:10.2466/28.11.PR0.115c10z2

17.

Pekrun

Goetz

Frenzel

A. C.

Barchfeld

Perry

R. P.

(2011). Measuring emotions in students’ learning and performance: The achievement emotions questionnaire (AEQ). Contemporary Educational Psychology, 36, 36-48. doi:10.1016/j.cedpsych.2010.10.002

18.

Pekrun

Götz

Perry

R. P.

(2005). Achievement emotions questionnaire (AEQ). user’s manual. Munich, Germany: Department of Psychology, University of Munich.

19.

Teimouri

Goetze

Plonsky

(2019). Second language anxiety and achievement: A meta-analysis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 41, 363-387. doi:10.1017/S0272263118000311

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.36 MB

Development and Validation of a New Multidimensional Language Class Anxiety Scale

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material