Attitudes towards English Language Norms in the Expanding Circle: Development and Validation of a new Model and Questionnaire

Abstract

This paper describes the development and validation of a new model and questionnaire to measure Iranian English as a foreign language learners’ attitudes towards the use of native versus non-native English language norms. Based on a comprehensive review of the related literature and interviews with domain experts, five factors were identified. A draft version of a questionnaire based on those five factors containing 40 items for assessing learners’ attitudes towards norms was designed. The draft version was piloted with a group of 273 Iranian learners and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of the obtained data indicated that five factors could be extracted. Then the fitness of the model was checked through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) through the administration of the questionnaire to another group of 554 Iranian English language learners. The result of CFA revealed that the model enjoyed a satisfactory level of fitness indices, meaning that the five-factor structure including linguistic instrumentalism, communicativity, ethnorelativity, language maintenance, and linguistic prestige was not due to random variance.