Abstract:

Foreign language anxiety has been one of the important issues that the researchers in the field of language teaching have studied on so far. There is a close relationship between language learners’ anxiety level and their success in language learning. Anxiety appears to have a significant effect especially on productive skills like speaking and listening. Some studies have indicated that listening anxiety as a part of general anxiety has a detrimental factor that can affect language learners negatively. In the Turkish EFL context language learners have much difficulty with listening comprehension skill and do not know how to handle with this problem. For that reason, this study aims to measure listening anxiety of the students in University preparatory classes and to figure out coping strategies learners use to overcome this problem. For this purpose, the two questionnaires were used in the study mainly to seek information about the anxiety level of foreign language learners. Participants involved 223 Turkish EFL learners (121 females and 102 males) from preparatory classes of a state university. The results of the study indicated that Turkish EFL learners experience listening anxiety to some extent. In addition, a significant relationship between listening anxiety and metacognitive strategy use of the EFL learners were determined. Based on the findings of the study some recommendations were yielded.

Keywords:

Listening anxiety, metacognitive strategy use, English as a foreign language.