Development and Validation of EFL Teachers’ Preferred Use of Anxiety Reducing Strategies Questionnaire

This study aimed at developing and validating a scale for measuring EFL teachers’ perceived strategies for reducing their learners’ language learning anxiety (LLA). In this mixed-methods research, adopting an exploratory sequential design and convenient sampling, 200 EFL teachers from Kish and Safir language schools in Tehran were selected as participants. To develop the items for the scale, 30 EFL teachers, randomly selected from the initial 200 teachers, were interviewed on their perceptions of learners' sources of anxiety and the strategies they preferred to use to reduce their learners’ LLA. The results of interview content analysis along with the extant theoretical standpoints and empirical literature were drawn upon to develop an 18-item questionnaire for measuring EFL teachers’ preferred English LLA reducing strategies for learners. The results of Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) revealed a four-factor model including learning process-related, explicit teaching of anxiety reducing strategies (ARS), materials, and presentation of instruction. The results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) also indicated that this four-factor model has acceptable reliability and validity. On the basis of the results, the developed questionnaire enjoys acceptable psychometric characteristics and can be reliably used to quantify and measure EFL teachers' preferred use of strategies to reduce their learners' anxiety.