Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety and Its Relationship with Students’ Gender and Educational Level of Parents

Keywords: Foreign language classroom anxiety, anxiety scale, parents, gender, university students. ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to determine whether there was a relationship between students’ foreign language classroom anxiety and educational level of their parents and genders. In this study, a Likert type scale, which was developed by Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope (1986) and adapted into Turkish by Öner and Gedikoğlu (2007) was used. ‘Foreign Language Anxiety Scale’ was applied to 278 freshmen students at Faculty of Science and Letters in the academic year of 2011-2012 at Bingöl University. 154 participants were female and 123 were male. The scale’s validity and reliability were examined and Cronbach Alpha coefficient was found 0.91. The data were analyzed by SPSS (20). The findings of the study revealed that there was no meaningful difference in foreign language anxiety levels of participants in terms of their gender. The results of the study also proved that the students whose parents were primary school graduates scored higher in foreign language anxiety scale than those whose parents were graduates of high school. The education level of the parents was found as a significant factor that affected foreign language classroom anxiet