An Investigation into University Students' Foreign Language Speaking Anxiety

Abstract

How anxiety affects the learning a foreign language is a focus in the current studies such as Horwitz's (1986), and Maclntyre and Gardner's (1994). Taking into consideration this focus, the aim of this study is to identify whether the students' foreign language speaking anxiety demonstrate significant differences in terms of their gender, language level, receiving English preparatory training, and the kind of high school they graduated from. The research group included 320 male (65.6 %) and 168 female (34.4 %) English preparatory students at Istanbul Technical University. Foreign Language Speaking Anxiety Questionnaire developed by Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope (1986) and adapted in Turkish by Saltan (2003) was used as the data collection tool. Data were analysed using independent samples T-test and one-way ANOVA. According to T-test results, it was seen that female students' score is higher than male students'. Also, it could be reported anxiety of students who have received English preparatory training are lower based on T-test results. Moreover, ANOVA results indicated the students' language level and the kind of high school do not affect their speaking anxiety. In a nutshell, the foreign language speaking anxiety is affected by gender and receiving English preparatory training. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.