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Abstract
The aim of this study is to develop a scale that determines the reasons for university students' English speaking difficulties. The exploratory sequential design has been used to carry out this study. First detailed research has been made on the speaking problems of students while learning English. Then, short interviews with university students have been carried out. Finally, an item pool has been created and presented to experts for their opinions. Necessary corrections were made based on the feedback of experts. The scale has been applied to 380 undergraduate students in Afyonkarahisar. Exploratory Factor Analysis has been applied for 27 items. According to the scree plot, five factors have been determined based on the main breakpoints. Nine items have been omitted after analyzing the factor loads and the item-total correlation test results, and the remaining 18 items have been grouped into four factors. The item discrimination value is significant. These factors explain 53.857 % of the total variance. Cronbach Alpha value of the scale is 0.837. The factor loads of the items are between .82-.45. The factors are named “theoretical knowledge and problems based on personal issues”, “culture”, “English education,” and “motivation”. As a result of confirmatory factor analysis, goodness of fit indexes are seen to be acceptable (RMSEA=0.085; AGFI=0.82; SRMR=0.074; CFI=0.79; NNFI=0.75, χ2/sd 2.80).
