The effect of model United Nations conferences on secondary education students' attitudes and anxiety about speaking English

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of Model United Nations Conferences (MUN) on students' English speaking anxiety and their attitudes towards English. MUN conferences constitute one of the most important academic activities that develop the middle school, high school and university students' diplomatic skills and international relations, foreign language development and leadership, teamwork, critical thinking, creative thinking, problem solving and public speaking skills. MUN Conferences play an important role in the development of students, mostly in the form of club work in Turkey, and both as club work and as an elective course abroad. This research was conducted on the students who attended the "YUKOMUN -Yükselen College Model United Nations" conference organized by Yükselen College in the 2019-2020 academic year. A total of 150 students attended the conference and 33 students who attended an MUN conference for the first time were included in this study. In order to collect data, "Foreign Language Class Anxiety Scale" developed by Horwitz in 1986 and translated into Turkish by Dalkılıç in 2001, and "Attitude towards English Scale" developed by Aiken in 1979 and translated into Turkish by Tunç in 2003 were used. The study was conducted through online surveys in the fall semester of 2019-2020. According to the results of the study, the English speaking anxiety of the students who attended the MUN conferences decreased significantly and their attitudes towards English increased positively. In addition, a semi-structured interview was conducted with students to explore the effects of MUN conferences on their personal development.