The children’s foreign language anxiety scale: Reliability and validity

Abstract

Foreign language anxiety (FLA) has been mainly associated with adult language learners. Although FLA forms aserious problem in the foreign language learning process for all learners, the effects of FLA on children havebeen mainly overlooked. The underlying reason is that there is a lack of an appropriate measurement tool forFLA among children. In addition, FLA studies have included mostly the adult learners into research. Therefore,the current study intends to present the tests of reliability and validity for the Children's Foreign LanguageAnxiety Scale (CFLAS) and to report on the reliability, validity and factor structure of the scale. Results showthat CFLAS is a reliable and valid tool to measure the levels of FLA among children aged 7-12 who learnEnglish as a foreign language (EFL) in the Turkish EFL context.