Investigation of middle school students' anxiety, self-efficacy and academic achievements toward foreign language learning

A common language is needed to establish and maintain communication between societies. In this context; the need for foreign language learning is increasing day by day. English, which is among the languages existing in the world today, is widely used and accepted as a universal language. However, in learning a foreign language, there are problems such as the inability of the individual to communicate effectively in the language learned and to understand what he/she is listening to. Low self-efficacy and high anxiety have an important place among these problems experienced in the foreign language learning process. In this study, it was aimed to reveal the relationship between students' foreign language course anxiety, academic self-efficacy perceptions, and academic achievements. The correlation research design was used in this study. The study group of the study was composed of 600 eighth grade students, 300 boys and 300 girls, randomly selected from four schools and 22 different classes in Kırşehir city center. In the study, Foreign Language Anxiety Scale developed by Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope (1986), Foreign Language Learning Self-Efficacy Scale developed by Yanar and Bümen (2012) and personal information form prepared by the researcher were used. The students' 2019-2020 first term English grades were collected from e-school system via school administration. Descriptive statistics, inferential statistics and correlation analysis were used to analyze the research data. According to the foreign language self-efficacy score average t-test analysis results of the participants, the difference between male and female mean scores is statistically significant in favor of girls. Accordingly, foreign language self-efficacy scores of female students are higher than boys. However, there is no significant difference between the average scores of boys and girls in terms of the foreign language anxiety score. Finally, a moderate, significant, and positive correlation was found between foreign language self-efficacy average score and foreign language anxiety score average [ r=–.37, p<.0005]. At the same time, a moderate, significant and positivie correlation between foreign language self-efficacy score and academic achievement score average[ r=–.49, p<.0005].