Student teachers’ attitudes towards the compulsory English lessons at a Turkish university

Abstract

The intent of the current study is to explore teacher candidates’ cognitive, affective, and behavioral attitude towardsthe compulsory English courses at universities and the relation of attitude with the participants’ genders, studyingdepartments, graduated high schools, goals and hours for studying English. The cross-sectional survey andcorrelational research design, interlaced within each other, were embraced to reach that objective. 207 volunteerfreshman students were sampled at the education faculty of a state university. A partially adapted survey waswielded as a data collection instrument. Based on the results of the descriptive and inferential statistics, while alarge number of the respondents aimed to pass the English course, almost half of them did not ever exert any effortto learn the English language. The participants displayed negative attitude in all attitudinal componentssubstantiating monolithic attitudinal concept. Male students displayed more favorable dispositions than females.Teacher learners getting education at the Turkish Language Education department bore more approving attitudethan the other departments. The participants graduated from general high schools unexpectedly embraced morefavorable dispositions. The participants’ goals and hours for studying English had very little share on their attitude.Hinged upon the results, a number of suggestions were forwarded to educators to promote approving dispositionsin the language learners and teacher learners.