Development and Validation of a New Multidimensional Language Class Anxiety Scale

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.

A Systematic Review of Foreign Language Listening Anxiety: Focus on the Theoretical Definitions and Measurements

“…First, six studies originally developed scales to measure FL listening anxiety. Among them, five studies targeted at identifying FL listening anxiety from different perspectives ( Kim, 2000 ; Elkhafaifi, 2005 ; Mills et al, 2006 ; Chang, 2008b ; Kutuk et al, 2019 ); however, one study aimed at examining general foreign language anxiety ( Horwitz et al, 1986 ). But this general foreign language anxiety scale was utilized to measure FL listening anxiety directly due to its heavy weight on the importance of speaking and listening anxiety ( Aida, 1994 ; Cheng et al, 1999 ; Pae, 2013 ).…”

“…A total of 15 studies adopted situation-specific-based scales to measure FL listening anxiety, with 10 studies (15.2%) measuring general listening anxiety and five studies (7.6%) measuring listening test anxiety. Other studies that employed various approaches to measure FL listening anxiety were only minimally present; for example, seven studies measured FL listening anxiety under the approach of the sources of anxiety; eight studies measured FL listening under the approaches of learner characteristics and FL listening ability, Kim, 2000Kim, , 2011Kimura, 2008;Bekleyen, 2009;Wang, 2010Wang, , 2016Kiliç and Uçkun, 2012;Mohammadi Golchi, 2012;Capan and Karaca, 2013;Pae, 2013;Serraj and Noordin, 2013;Tsai, 2013;Afshar and Hamzavi, 2014;Choi and Chon, 2014;Movahed, 2014;Yamauchi, 2014b;Li, 2015;Rahimi and Soleymani, 2015;Zhai, 2015;Bang and Hiver, 2016;Berber and Gönen, 2017;Cheng, 2017;Halat and Özbay, 2018;Jee, 2018;Namaziandost et al, 2018;Babakhouya and Elkhadiri, 2019;Kutuk et al, 2019;Ranto Rozak et al, 2019;Fathi et al, 2020;Hutapea et al, 2020;Hamid and Idrus, 2021;Niimoto, 2021 Emotionality 33 50.0 Tension over English, emotionality, affective, listening anxiety Kim, 2000Kim, , 2011Kimura, 2008;Bekleyen, 2009;…”

Relations between gender stereotyping and foreign language attainment: The mediating role of language learners’ anxiety and self‐efficacy

“…A bifactor approach makes it possible to identify a single general factor together with a number of specific orthogonal (i.e., uncorrelated) group factors (Reise, Moore, & Haviland, 2010). In the MLCAS, we used the EFL class anxiety as the general factor and anxiety relating to listening, speaking, reading, writing, and testing as the group factors (see Kutuk et al., 2020 for further details). In the QSLL, EFL self‐efficacy was the general factor, and self‐efficacy relating to receptive and productive language skills were the two group factors.…”

“…The MLCAS is a 30-item scale intended to provide a multidimensional assessment of foreign language anxiety (Kutuk, Putwain, Kaye, & Garrett, 2020). It consists of a single common factor that represents EFL class anxiety as well as the major domains of language class anxiety (i.e., listening, speaking, reading, writing, and testing).…”

Inter-rater reliability in Learner Corpus Research

“…These two types of reliability are distinct from 'internal consistency' (also called 'instrument reliability'), which refers to the extent to which a set of items in a psychometric scale are correlated (see McKay & Plonsky, in press). The critical distinction between internal consistency and intra/inter-rater reliabilities lies in the source of error; the former attributes inconsistencies to the items themselves and the scale to which they belong, whereas the latter estimates human error (for examples and related discussion, see Kutuk, Putwain, Kaye, &Garrett, 2019, andMorgan, Zhu, Johnson, &Hodge, 2014, respectively).…”