An exploratory study on turkish high school students' anxiety for speaking English

English speaking anxiety has been a problem among English learners throughout the history of second language learning. Moreover, this problem was divided into different groups and examined on each different area. Those groups included gender, grade, internal and external factors, and motivation categories to impact the students' speaking anxiety. Several studies were conducted to observe the factors and reasons that cause anxiety on L2 learners. These studies have included different results and factors affecting the students' speaking anxiety through the use of different data collection tools. Researchers attempted to examine the significant findings of the specific focus groups. In this study, it was aimed to reveal the importance of considering the level of high school students' English speaking anxiety with its underlying reasons. To conduct the study, high school learners were taken into account to examine. 9th, 10th and 11th grades selected from Elazig Doga Anatolian High School in Elazig were included in the study as the study group. In order to fulfill the aim of the study, students were observed in terms of gender and grade. Totally, 97 high school students from 9th, 10th and 11th grades of Elazig Doga Anatolian High School were taken in a survey study including 16 items regarding English Speaking anxiety. The scale used for the purpose of this study was developed by Orakçı in 2018. Beside the survey, an English Speaking exam was applied on the learners, and it was aimed to find out the relationship between the learners' English Speaking anxiety levels and their achievements. In this study, students' genders were placed into groups and associated with their anxiety level, and no significant difference was observed in the results of English Speaking Anxiety Scale. Additionally, students' grades and perceptions about speaking English anxiety were compared through the same scale. Thus, it was found out that 10th grade students had different reasons for English Speaking anxiety compared to 9th and 11th grade students. On the other hand, it was found out that the relationship between learners' English Speaking anxiety and their exam scores was negatively significant.