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Article published In:
ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 173:1 (2022) ► pp.94–119

The predictors of exam performance of Kazakh university students and secondary school pupils learning Turkish

An exploratory investigation

ORCID logo | Birkbeck, University of London
The present study investigates the effect of sociobiographical, emotional, attitudinal characteristics and teacher perceptions of 275 Kazakh secondary school pupils and 317 university students on their exam performance in Turkish as a foreign language (FL). Multiple regression analyses reveal that exam results in Turkish of secondary school pupils are predicted by teacher gender, participant’s age, attitude towards the FL and FL Classroom Anxiety. A very different picture emerges for university students, where FL level, participant’s gender, FL Enjoyment, FL Classroom Anxiety and teacher’s age explain more than twice as much variance. FL exam scores for both groups are thus underpinned by different sets of complex interactions between multiple learner-internal and learner-external variables and the effect of emotions is much stronger among university learners.
Keywords: Foreign Language Enjoyment, Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety, Kazakhstan, Turkish, Exam performance
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Literature review
    • A brief historical overview of emotion research in SLA
    • Foreign language enjoyment and foreign language classroom anxiety
      • The first study on FLE and FLCA
      • The effect of the teacher on learner emotion and performance
      • The link between classroom emotions and FL performance
      • Research on emotions of learners acquiring two languages simultaneously
      • The issue of causality
    • Context: Turkish in Kazakhstan
  • Method
    • Procedures
    • Participants
    • Instruments
    • Data analysis
  • Results
  • Discussion
    • Limitations
    • Pedagogical implications
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgment
  • References
Published online: 12 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/itl.21019.dew
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