Anxiety Levels of Students About Speaking Their Mother Tongue and a Foreign Language—A Case From Bosnia-Herzegovina

Abstract

This research aimed to determine the anxiety levels of students towards Bosnian, their native language, and Turkish, which is a foreign language. With this aim, two separate scales were used in the study to determine speech anxiety levels. The sample of the study is comprised of 49 female students. It is a qualitative research, and the data gathered in this study were evaluated on SPSS 21.0 software package. The findings indicated that the levels of anxiety of students comprising the sample group toward mother tongue were moderate, and their out-of-class speech anxiety level, one of the levels of anxiety toward foreign language, was higher than the mean. There was no significant difference between the levels of anxiety toward mother tongue and the levels of anxiety toward foreign language of the students comprising the sample group. In line with the findings obtained from the application, interviews were conducted with the students on the causes of anxiety. The causes of anxiety students referred to include getting excited, being embarrassed, being badly criticized, fearing that their knowledge is inadequate.