The effect of learning environment formed by active learning model to middle school students' academic success and attitudes towards english lesson

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of learning environment formed by active learning model to middle school students' academic success and attitudes towards English lesson. Furthermore, the effects of variables, such as gender, mother's and father's educational status to students' academic success and attitudes were examined. Research design was determined as quasi experimental study. The sample of the study is comprised of 40 students who study at 8/A and 8/C classes at Zafer Middle School, Çobanlar, Afyonkarahisar. The class 8/A with 20 students was determined as experimental group, and the class 8/C with 20 students as control group. In this study, students' academic success was determined with the TEOG exam by Educational Ministry. In order to determine students' attitudes towards English classes, The Scale of Attitudes towards English Lesson. The Scale of Attitudes towards English Lessonwas developed by Ulviye Aydoslu (2005). Scale consists of 30 items and Cronbach Alpha is 0.93, dimension of cognitive 0.62, dimension of emotional 0.93 and dimension of behavioral is 0.71. To measure construct validity, factor analysis was done. According to the results of factor analysis, the Scale of Attitudes is comprised of items of which factorial values changing between .318 and .729. In analyzing data to measure normal distribution and homogeneity of variances, Levene test, Shapiro wilk test were applied. And then parametric tests; t test, ancova and correlation analysis were used. The results show that active learning doesn't have meaningful effect on students' attitudes towards English language and academic success. Moreover variables such as gender, their parents' educational status have no meaningful effect on students' academic success and attitudes towards English lesson.