On the dimensions of test anxiety and foreign language learners

Anxiety is one of the most basic human emotions and occurs in every person. In the educational setting, anxiety is experienced often by the students when being evaluated such as when taking a test which is called test anxiety. ‘Test anxiety’ is an apprehension over academic evaluation. This anxiety is also available in foreign language learning. This study intends to investigate the relationship between age, gender, discipline and foreign language test anxiety specifically. The participants of the present study consisted of 323 Iranian undergraduate and post graduate university males and females students from different disciplines. Sarason Anxiety Scale (1975) was given to the students before the foreign language final exam. The results indicated that there was not a significant correlation between age and anxiety (r = -0.024, P = 0.664). The result of the independent t-test also established that males and females were equally affected by test anxiety, t (321) = 5.24, P = 0.601. Along with ANOVA pair wise comparisons of the means revealed that pre-university had the highest level of test anxiety (M = 20.25) comparing the students of other disciplines. Exploratory factor analysis found out 3 main factors with the more items loading on them regarding worry and emotional feeling before the exam. At the end some recommendations were presented for language teachers to help students reduce test anxiety.   Key words: Test anxiety, gender, discipline, foreign language anxiety.