Development and Initial Validation of Foreign Language Anxiety Scale (FLAS)

The study attempts to investigate the nature of foreign language for developing an instrument to measure anxiety of foreign language for use with high school students in Iran. By using the four domains of foreign language, a preliminary 35-item questionnaire was developed and tested based on high school students. The Participants for factor analysis were 350 teachers, representing 14 schools in Ahvaz. These samples were cluster randomly selected and grouped based on their sex, age, academic levels, the status of the school, etc. The survey instrument used in this study for the validity of the scale is Multifactor Language Questionnaire -FLA (Horwitz et al., 1986). The properties of reliability and validity have borne significant results which show this instrument can be considered suitable to determine the position of foreign language in high school students. Factor analysis was made from which 24 items were extracted which had a factor loading of >0.5 on the four domains. Analysis of data in this study supported the inclusion of four factors namely foreign test anxiety, foreign writing anxiety, foreign teacher anxiety, and foreign pronunciation anxiety. These findings are discussed together with recommendations for upcoming studies.