Speaking anxiety of bilingual Turkish student in primary schools in France

Speaking is one of the four language skills acquired in the first years of life and it is a means of communication between people. Due to the interactive function of oral competence, people can experience speaking anxiety. When it comes to immigration, speaking heritage language and majority language become important. Indeed, in order to communicate, immigrants and descendant of immigrants must know the heritage language and majority language. In the literature review, few research have investigated speaking anxiety in immigrant context (Sevinç, 2016; Dewaele and Sevinç, 2016). However, this subject is essential to understand the language choice and use of immigrants' children. The aim of the interdisciplinary study is to identify and compare French (Majority language) and Turkish (heritage language) speaking anxiety degrees of primary school students who live in France and have Turkish origins. In addition, another objective is to understand and analyze the relation between these speaking anxieties and variables such as age, class, gender and participation in Turkish heritage language classes. For this, the Likert-type bilingual French-Turkish speaking anxiety scale was developed and applied to 164 pupils in primary school. The quantitative date obtained were analyzed with SPSS statistics 22 version. As a result, the students stated that they felt a moderate in French speaking anxiety and moderate/high level in Turkish speaking anxiety. Altough no significant relationship was found between majority and heritage speaking anxiety, Turkish speaking anxiety levels were higher than French speaking anxiety. İn other words, students experience more speaking heritage language anxiety. Moreover, speaking anxieties differ significantly by children's age and class but do not change by them gender. Finally, students who follow Turkish heritage language classes get a significantly lower Turkish and French speaking anxiety than those who do not participate. Keywords: bilingualism, Turkish immigrants, language anxiety, heritage language anxiety, majority speaking anxiety