Abstract:

Abstract enThe goal of the study is to develop a scale of “English Listening Anxiety” for determining 9th grade students’ anxiety levels towards listening skills in English as a target language. It has been stated in the literature that the scale development process should have certain steps. While the scale was being developed in this study, the ordering was followed in terms of the scale development process. First, a review of literature was done. Based on the information gathered from the review and four field expert opinions, the scale with 23 items was generated as a five point (Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Partly Agree, Agree and Strongly Agree) Likert Scale. The proposal scale, composed of 23 items, was applied to two study groups in Turkey. The group of Exploratory Factor Analysis that aims to determine the psychometric properties especially the construct validity and reliability of the scale consisted of 485 ninth grade students whereas the group of Confirmatory Factor Analysis that aims to find out whether the factor structure demonstrated by the scale was confirmed or not consisted of 537 ninth grade students. The construct validity of the scale was determined by using principal component analysis. This analysis also includes Kaiser Meyer Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett Test, which were carried out to check the appropriateness of the data for factor analysis. KMO value of the scale was found to be 0.975. As a result of the Bartlett Test, the significance value was found lower than 0.05, which means factor analysis can be conducted. A total of 9 items were excluded from the scale. It has been seen in the exploratory factor analysis that the scale revealed only one factor. The results of exploratory factor analysis obtained show that item-total correlations are between 0,684 and 0,916. The variance explained is 73%. The highest score that can be obtained from the scale is 70, whereas the lowest score is 14. Getting high score from the scale shows that students have a high level of listening anxiety, whereas getting low score from the scale shows that they have a low level of listening anxiety. The study showed that “English Listening Anxiety Scale” is a valid and reliable tool. Using “English Listening Anxiety Scale” with other data collection tools on English listening skills and comparing the level of students’ anxiety with the level of anxiety of teachers toward English listening skills will be beneficial.

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