The Relationship between Test Anxiety, Motivation and MI and the TOEFL iBT Reading, Listening and Writing Scores

Abstract

TOEFL iBT is widely used as a certificating device, and is strongly claimed accountable by the people who utilize it. However, there are indications of the vulnerability of TOEFL iBT to the test takers’ characteristics. The purpose of the present study is to provide empirical evidence to see if there is a relation between test anxiety, type of motivation and intellectual abilities of test takers and their scores on TOEFL iBT reading, listening and writing sections, specially the verbatim use of the input texts in the integrated writing task which is read and listen to write. To carry out the present study a Multiple Intelligences Development Assessment Scales (MIDAS) questionnaire, a test anxiety scale and some survey questions detecting test anxiety provoking factors were given to 30 sujects attending TOEFL iBT classes at ACECR. Then their scores on a TOEFL iBT test were compared, and the language features in their written texts were analyzed for source use to find out the possible effects of the given characteristics. The results revealed that first, test takers usually had test anxiety second, some factors like time limitation and lack of self confidence provoked test anxiety and third, there was a relation between musical and kinesthetic intelligences and writing and listening respectively. Linguistic analysis of their responses to the integrated writing task, however, revealed no instances of the verbatim use of the source. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.