The relationship between reading anxiety and reading comprehension skills of learners of Turkish as a foreign language

The purposes of this study are to reveal the relationship between reading anxiety and comprehension skills of learners of Turkish as a foreign language, and besides, to examine reading anxiety of students and their comprehension skills with several variables. In accordance with this goal, the 'relational model' was used in this study. Target population of the study consists of students learning Turkish as a foreign language. As all of the target population cannot be accessed, sampling has been carried out by applying appropriate sample. In this regard, 510 students 105 from TOMER of Gazi University, 112 from TOMER of Gaziantep University, 54 from TOMER of Inonu University, 31 from TOMER of Sakarya University, 70 from Istanbul University Language Centre, 13 from TOMER of Sabahattin Zaim University, 15 from TOMER of Yıldız University, 56 from TOMER of Aydin University, 54 from TOMER of Fatih University, who are learning Turkish as a foreign language at B level, were enrolled in the sample. To collect data, "Reading Anxiety Scale" and "Comprehension Achievement Test" were developed for the students learning Turkish as a foreign language at B level. In analyzing the data obtained from this scale and achievement test, SPSS (21) software package was used. As a result of the comprehension test, the students learning Turkish as a foreign language at B level got 33 on average, and while the highest score was 45, the lowest one was 8, and the standard deviation was 7.55. Three subscales of reading anxiety levels of students on full scale and scale scores were examined separately. As a result of the investigation, "the fear of reading skills" in reading anxiety scores were found to be 15.07 on average. "grammar anxiety" was found to be 18,71 on average, and "reading comprehension anxiety" was found to be 13,14. According to the results obtained from the whole of the scale, it was found that the students learning Turkish as a foreign language at B level got on average 46,92 in comprehension anxiety. It was found that the relationship between the scores, the students got at Comprehension Test and the ones they got from Comprehension Anxiety Test and its all subscales, were negative with between-,069-,275, and that there was not a significant relationship between only in the "comprehension anxiety" subscale of Reading Anxiety Scale and comprehension achievement test scores, and that there was significant difference in other correlation coefficients. In the light of all these results, it was found that there is an inverse correlation between the scores got from comprehension achievement test and the ones got from reading anxiety scale, and that the achievement score obtained from comprehension test decreased as the reading anxiety increased. It was found that the achievement score of the students showed no significant differences with respect to the variables such as gender, age, Turkish language knowledge before coming to Turkey, reading books, magazines and newspapers in Turkish, their aim of learning Turkish and reading frequency, but a significant difference was found according to the variables such as the number of the acquired languages and duration of stay in Turkey. It was found that reading anxiety score of the students showed no significant differences with respect to the variables such as gender, Turkish language knowledge before coming to Turkey; but a significant difference was found with respect to the variables such as age, reading books, magazines and newspapers in Turkish, the number of the languages known, duration of stay in Turkey, their aim of learning Turkish and reading frequency