English speaking anxiety level of fifth grade students in a middle school in Van

This study aims to analyse the speaking anxiety of students at the fifth grade intensive foreign language classrooms by comparing with regular fifth grades, and it intends to investigate whether there are any changes between the beginning and the end of the academic year in terms of speaking anxiety. It also aims to analyse the speaking anxiety level differences according to demographical information. Lastly, this study attempts to determine the anxiety provoking factors and possible ways for coping with them. This research was conducted with 149 fifth grade students studying at a state middle school, and 5 language teachers working at the same school during 2018/2019 academic year in Van, Turkey. Designed as an explanatory sequential mixed method research, the quantitative data were obtained from students via a scale, and then the qualitative data were gathered from both students and teachers by a semi-structured interview. The quantitative data were analysed by Mann Whitney U, Kruskal Wallis, Spearman's rank correlation tests on SPSS v.23, whereas the qualitative data were examined by content analysis. The present study revealed that fifth grade students feel anxious at a moderate level, and students of intensive foreign language classrooms are found less anxious than regular ones. Also, some other significant differences were found in terms of gender, age, supportive courses, family income level, and English achievement scores of the previous year. On the other hand, both types of classrooms did not show significant changes in terms of both academic terms in themselves. Lastly, some anxiety provoking factors and ways for coping with them were presented. As a consequence, the research had implications for language teachers both to help students reduce their anxiety and to make the classroom environment more stress-free.