Children’s Foreign Language Anxiety Scale: Preliminary Tests of Reliability and Validity

Year 2016, Volume: 1 Issue: 3, 0 - 0, 17.09.2016

Selami Aydın Leyla Harputlu , Serhat Güzel Özgehan Uştuk Şeyda Savran Çelik , Deniz Genç

Abstract

Foreign language anxiety (FLA), which constitutes a serious problem in the foreign language learning process, has been mainly seen as a research issue regarding adult language learners, while it has been overlooked in children. This is because there is a lack of appropriate tools to measure FLA among children, whereas there are many studies on the scales that aim to measure anxiety levels among adult learners. Thus, the current study aims to conduct the preliminary tests of reliability and validity of the Children’s Foreign Language Anxiety Scale (CFLAS) and to report on the pilot examination of reliability, validity and factor structure of the CFLAS. The findings of the pilot study show that CFLAS is a reliable and valid tool to measure FLA levels among children who learn English as a foreign language (EFL) within the age range of 7-12 in a Turkish EFL context. 

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