Examining Turkish University Students’ Sense of Achievement, Motivation, and Anxiety: A Comparison of the English- and French-Medium Education Systems
Examining Turkish University Students’ Sense of Achievement, Motivation, and Anxiety: A Comparison of the English- and French-Medium Education Systems
Foreign language-medium instruction at tertiary level is receiving great attention in our decade. Thus,this study examines the significance of the following psychological factors for Turkish students enrolledin tertiary education: (i) sense of achievement, (ii) motivation, and (iii) anxiety. In particular, it focuseson the perceptions of Turkish students receiving tertiary education by an English-medium instruction(EMI) or a French-medium instruction (FMI). The study also focuses on the impact of context onstudents’ perceptions. To collect data, students enrolled in an EMI (N = 144) and FMI (N = 214) wereadministered a five-point Likert scale survey. Seventeen students were also interviewed for this study,and they represented one Turkish public university and two private universities. The study revealed thatthe students in both contexts had a higher sense of achievement, motivation, and low level of anxietywhilst receiving foreign language as the medium of instruction. Regarding the contextual difference,however, although the EMI and FMI students both perceived themselves successful, the former wasfound to be more motivated, whereas the latter was found to be more anxious. This paper discusses theimplications of these findings as well as giving suggestions for further research.© 2018 EJAL & the Authors. Published by Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics (EJAL). This is an open-accessarticle distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY-NC-ND)(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
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