An Investigation of the Variables Predicting Faculty of Education Students’ Speaking Anxiety through Ordinal Logistic Regression Analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine whether Cumhuriyet University Faculty of Education students’ levels of speaking anxiety are predicted by the variables of gender, department, grade, such sub-dimensions of “Speaking Self-Efficacy Scale for Pre-Service Teachers” as “public speaking”, “effective speaking”, “applying the speaking rules”, “organizing the speech content”, and “evaluating the speech”. Correlational survey model is employed in the study. While the dependent variable of the study is students’ “speaking anxiety”, its independent variables are gender, department, grade, and such sub-dimensions of “Speaking Self-Efficacy Scale for Pre-Service Teachers” as “public speaking”, “effective speaking”, “applying the speaking rules”, “organizing the speech content”, and “evaluating the speech”. The research population consists of 2983 students studying at seven departments of Faculty of Education of Cumhuriyet University in the 2015-2016 academic year. The research sample, on the other hand, is composed of 1057 students from seven departments of Faculty of Education of Cumhuriyet University. Data were collected via “Scale of Speaking Anxiety for Prospective Teachers”, which was developed by Kınay and Özkan (2014) to determine pre-service teachers’ speaking anxiety, and “Speaking Self-Efficacy Scale for Pre-Service Teachers”, which was developed by Katrancı and Melanlıoğlu (2013) to determine pre-service teachers’ speaking self-efficacy. Data were collected through ordinal logistic regression analysis as the dependent variable was made three-category and ordinal through cluster analysis. According to the logistic regression analysis results, gender, department, such sub-dimensions of “Speaking Self-Efficacy Scale for Pre-Service Teachers” as “public speaking” and “applying the speaking rules” have a significant influence on speaking anxiety.