A case study on secondary school EFL learners' attitudes towards short story based reading lessons

A great number of language learners would like to learn the language but they do not know how to learn and which materials to use. As educators, selecting appropriate, authentic and efficient materials and presenting them in an effective way are our considerations throughout our professional life. Additionally, as educators, our responsibility is to provide learners with well-prepared lesson procedures catering learners' interest and needs. Thus, learners may become eager to participate in lessons and adopt positive attitudes towards language learning. Moreover, in a long reaching perspective, they may have a successful language learner identity and continue language learning with this identity. The first goal of the present study was to reveal a group of secondary school students' interests in reading and their preferences regarding theme. The goal was achieved by an interest inventory. The findings of the inventory involve the answers to the first research question. In the light of findings, a framework program for short story based reading lessons was prepared according to students' needs and interests. In preparing the program, the researcher teacher took benefit from literature namely short stories. The other intent of the study was to investigate and reveal the efficiency of prepared program. In doing so, two research questions were built up to seek possible answers, during the application. The prepared program was conducted with four short stories throughout five weeks in the class and randomly selected ten students were interviewed about the lessons. As a researcher teacher, I also kept a diary to take notes about my observations I noticed during the implementations. At the end of the study, a perception questionnaire was conducted to identify the students' attitudes and perceived benefits of short story based reading lessons. The findings emerged from the data collection instruments showed that the students are not much interested in reading and they are in favor of some themes. In addition to these findings, the study revealed that short story based reading lessons offered various advantages to language learning.