The present study focuses on foreign language enjoyment (FLE) and foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) of 592 learners of Turkish as a foreign language (FL) in Kazakhstan. Mean levels of FLE and FLCA were found to be similar to previous studies in different settings with different target languages. In contrast with previous literature, a weak positive correlation was found between FLE and FLCA and the gender effect went in the opposite direction, with male participants reporting more FLCA than female participants. Multiple regression analyses revealed that FLE and FLCA were more strongly predicted by learners’ attitude toward Turkish and teacher-related variables than by learner-internal variables, confirming previous research outside Kazakhstan. Attitude toward the FL, teacher’s friendliness, strictness and frequency of use of the FL, attitude toward the teacher, participant’s age and FL exam result explained a total of 25% of variance in FLE. Differing slightly from previous studies, FLCA was found to be only weakly predicted (6% of variance) by some learner-internal variables (FL exam result, attitude toward the FL) as well as teacher-centred variables (friendliness, strictness). The findings suggest that variation in FLE and FLCA among Kazakh learners of Turkish is quite similar to that established in other contexts.

Turkish is spoken by a large number of people in a wide geographical area and teaching Turkish as a foreign language is a subject that gains importance nowadays. This research employed a quantitative survey strategy to address the issue of anxiety in learning Turkish language in and outside the classroom. Participants were 356 students of two high schools, one college and one university in Kazakhstan. Participants were given the Second Language Speaking Anxiety Scale (SLSAS), which was analyzed with: correlation to search for possible relations between anxiety, age, duration of studying Turkish, and Turkish course grades; MANOVA to assess the effect of gender and school type on students’ anxiety in speaking Turkish; and an exploratory factor analysis to identify factor structure of SLSAS. Additionally, an ANOVA was carried out on a second data set with 52 students to see any differences between students’ anxiety in speaking Turkish and English. The results of this research indicated that anxiety in speaking Turkish is weak and not related to students’ age, gender, years studying Turkish, and Turkish course grades. In addition, no significant differences were found between students’ anxiety in speaking Turkish and English. The only significant result was the relatively high anxiety of college students in the classroom. This research implies that anxiety in speaking Turkish does not differ so much from anxiety in speaking English.

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