Abstract:

Abstract Foreign language anxiety is an important research topic in the field of foreign language education and speaking is accepted as the most anxiety-provoking language skill. Therefore, present study aims at investigating the extent that perceived feelings of perfectionism and self-compassion of undergraduate students affect their speaking anxiety. For this purpose 200 undergraduate students participated in the study. A mixed method design was adopted with the administration of both quantitative and qualitative instruments. Quantitative data were gathered through three scales (Self-compassion scale, Multidimensional perfectionism scale and Second language speaking anxiety scale). With the aim of strengthening quantitative data with more in-depth questions, eight voluntary participants were administered open-ended questions. The findings of the study indicated that perfectionism and selfcompassion do not correlate both with each other and with foreign language speaking anxiety. However, findings of qualitative data revealed divergent results. The impact of the feelings of perfectionism and self-compassion on foreign language speaking anxiety were discussed together with the implications for a variety of parties. Author Biographies Görsev Sönmez Assist. Prof. Dr. English Language Teaching Biruni University Turkey E-mail: [email protected] ORCID: 0000-0001-6726-3452

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