EFL Students’ Evaluation Apprehension and Their Academic Achievement, Gender, and Educational level: Towards Designing and Validating a Comprehensive Scale

Jaheidzadeh, Safoura; Ghanizadeh, Afsaneh

EFL Students’ Evaluation Apprehension and Their Academic Achievement, Gender, and Educational level: Towards Designing and Validating a Comprehensive Scale

Document Type : Original Research Article

Authors

Safoura Jaheidzadeh ¹

Afsaneh Ghanizadeh ²

¹ English department, Imam Reza University

² English department, Imam Reza International University, Mashhad, Iran

Abstract

Student evaluation apprehension as one of the detrimental factors in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context, reduces and gradually diminishes student participation in classroom activities, since learners are mostly concerned with how others (teacher and classmates) evaluate/judge their performance. Due to the fact that the studies considering the important role of student evaluation apprehension are scarce in number, this study was conducted to validate the newly-designed questionnaire via exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and find the relationship between student evaluation apprehension and academic achievement, gender, and educational level of 258 EFL students. The results from EFA, CFA, and reliability analyses revealed that the new questionnaire is a valid and reliable instrument measuring EFL students’ evaluation apprehension. Moreover, a significant negative correlation was observed between student evaluation apprehension and academic achievement. Besides, it was found that females experience evaluation apprehension more than males, and BA students were also found to have more evaluation apprehension than their MA counterparts.

Keywords

evaluation apprehension

EFL students

academic achievement

EFA

CFA