Exploring the foreign language medium of instruction in tertiary level education in Turkey

This study investigated students' opinions of their achievement, motivation, and anxiety in one French-medium (FMI) and two English-medium (EMI) universities in Turkey investigating such variables as gender, context (EMI, FMI), grade, year of study, prep school education and GPA scores. To this end, 358 students were asked to complete a student questionnaire with 5-point Likert scale items as well as giving them opportunities to make comments for each item. In addition, 17 students were further invited to participate in semi-structured interviews. In order to analyze the quantitative data, first, factor analysis was run, and the overall reliability was calculated as .87. Descriptive and inferential statistics were run to analyze quantitative data using SPSS 20th edition, and qualitative data were analyzed by means of thematic analysis (pattern coding). The quantitative data indicated that while all students had higher median scores of achievement and motivation, they had lower sense of anxiety. Also, there were significant differences according to the variables of gender, context, grade, year of study, prep school education, and GPA scores. As for contextual differences, EMI students were more motivated while FMI students were more anxious. Regarding the qualitative results, while EMI and FMI students had positive opinions on their achievement and motivation, they were found to be anxious related to their learning in EMI or FMI.