Foreign language anxiety is becoming an important area of research in our profession. Debilitating language anxiety can have profound consequences on the language learning process. The purpose of the present study is to construct a scale to measure the anxiety that Japanese students experience in English language classrooms.
First, a pilot test was developed from open-ended questionnaires administered to 148 university students describing specific situations that had made them anxious in English language classrooms, and from five extant scales of foreign language anxiety developed in the U.S. and Canada (Ely, 1986; Gardner, 1985; Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986; MacIntyre & Gardner, 1994; Young, 1990). A total of 317 anxiety-producing situations were initially identified from the students’ reports and 90 items from the extant scales. Elimination of duplicate situations reduced the set of items to the following 12 dimensions: listening, speaking, reading, writing, being asked questions, mistakes, information processing, classroom activities, other classmates, teachers, language skills, and course work. Thirty-eight pilot test items, representing the 12 dimensions, were constructed and administered to 213 university students in first year and second year English classes. Each item was followed by a six-point Likert response scale. Results of factor analysis revealed that English language classroom anxiety was composed of three factors: anxiety about (a) low proficiency in English (e.g., I am anxious about whether I will be able to keep up with the classes), (b) evaluation from classmates (e.g., I am anxious that other students might think I am poor at English), and (c) speaking activities (e.g., I feel nervous when I speak English in class). The test-retest reliability for an interval of eight weeks was .85 for the general scale, and .85, .77, and .71 for the three subscales respectively. The internal consistency, using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, was .92 for the general scale, and .89, .84, and .82 for the subscales respectively. The present scale was determined to be highly reliable. The validity of the scale was assessed by its correlations with Leary’s (1983) Interaction Anxiousness Scale and with Shioya’s (1995) scale of cognitive appraisals of English learning skills and costs. It was posited that those who have high English language classroom anxiety tend to feel anxious in social situations and to consider English language learning troublesome. The general scale and the three subscales were all significantly and positively correlated with both Leary’s and Shioya’s scales, verifying the validity of the present scale. Limitations of the present study and implications for future research were discussed.
本研究は、日本人学生の英語学習に関わる不安の実証的研究の端緒として、英語授業不安尺度を作成し、その信頼性と妥当性を検討したものである。まず予備調査において、既存の外国語不安尺度の項目（全９０項目）と日本人英語学習者の自由記述（全３１７項目）から、本調査に用いる３８の質問項目を選定した。２１３名の大学生に対し６件法で回答を求め、因子分析を行った結果、英語授業不安は、英語力に対する不安、他の学生からの評価に対する不安、および発話活動に対する不安から構成されていることが示された。尺度の信頼性は、アルファ係数と再検査法により十分に高いことが示された。また、「対人不安」および「英語学習におけるスキル・コストの認知」との有意な正の相関関係から、尺度の妥当性が概ね確認された。
Exploring the Factors of Foreign Language Anxiety Among Chinese Undergraduate English Majors and Non-English Majors
