Foreign language teaching anxiety

Anxiety in Foreign Language (FL) learning has attracted the attention of many researchers. Studies on FL anxiety have focused on the language learner; few studies have investigated the anxiety experienced by teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) while teaching the target language. Various scales were developed to measure the FL anxiety experienced by language learners. Although there is a scale to measure general teaching anxiety, there is not a scale measuring FL teaching anxiety of FL teacher. The aim of this study was to construct a scale measuring the FL teaching anxiety of FL teachers. The current study was conducted in two phases. In Phase 1, incidents that created anxiety in EFL teachers while teaching the FL were investigated. Data were collected through diaries and semi-structured interviews with 32 non-native EFL teachers. The results showed that EFL teachers felt anxiety in various situations. In Phase 2 a scale that measures Foreign Language Teaching Anxiety in FL teachers was developed and its validity and reliability were tested. 3 sources were used to construct the items: 1. data obtained in Phase 1, 2. the Foreign Language Teaching Anxiety Scale, 3. the Teachers Anxiety Scale with respect to English. The study resulted in a five-point likert scale with 26 items, which were distributed under 5 factors. The total variance of the factors was 61.17 and the reliability of the scale was: .9173. These results showed that the Foreign Language Teaching Anxiety Scale (FLTAS) that was developed in this study was highly reliable and valid.