Factors affecting foreign language learning of secondary school students

The purpose of this study is to determine whether factors like foreign language anxiety, educational level and occupation of families, schools and school types students attend, their genres, teaching methods, and the positive ideas of students about language learning are affecting their English learning or not. In this study, Likert type scale was applied to 293 randomly selected students among 1454 preparatory class students from 17 foreign language oriented high schools in central Gaziantep in the academic year of 2004-2005. The data were analyzed by using t test, one way ANOVA, and Scheffé test.The effects of the level of education and the occupation of the parents, the genres of the students, the school type they attend, the primary schools they graduated from on the level of foreign language anxiety was investigated and no effects of these parameters were found. On the other hand, some of the schools where the students had high level of foreign language anxiety had low foreign language success.Findings of this study indicated that foreign language anxiety levels affect secondary school student?s English learning academic successes, the students with high level of foreign language anxiety received low grades in English language courses at the end of the academic year; however, the students with the low level of foreign language anxiety received high grades. In addition to this, this study revealed the fact that students? schools and school types they are attending, their fathers? educational level, teaching methods, and their positive ideas about language learning were significantly affecting their academic success in English learning. The results indicated that there were no differences between the level of Foreign Language Anxiety of genders , however female students were found to be more successful in foreign language learning than male students.