Investigation of primary school students' attitudes to reading and motivations for word learning in terms of various variables

The main purpose of this research is to investigate 4th grade students' attitudes towards reading and their motivation to learn vocabulary. Relational screening model was used in this study, which is a quantitative research. The participants of the research consists of 4th grade students in primary school in Yatağan district of Muğla province in the 2020-2021 academic year. In the research, "Personal Information Form" prepared by the researcher, "Attitude Scale towards Reading for Grades 1-6 with Garfield Visual" developed by McKenna and Kear (1990), adapted into Turkish by Kocaarslan (2016) and "Vocabulary Learning Motivation Scale" developed by Ersoy and Boyacı (2018) were used as data collection tools. The data was analyzed with the SPSS 22 package program. Frequency, Percentage, Independent Samples t-Test and One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Post-Hoc Tests (LSD, Scheffe and Dunnett's C), Correlation Analysis were used in the analysis of the data. When the findings were examined, it was determined that the primary school 4th grade students' attitudes towards reading and their motivation to learn vocabulary were above the medium level. The attitudes of primary school students and students' motivation to learn vocabulary towards reading showed a significant difference in favor of female students according to gender. The students' attitudes towards reading differed significantly according to the teacher's attitude, the daily reading time of the students, and the daily book reading times of the mothers and fathers. However, no significant difference was found in vocabulary learning motivations, "intrinsic motivation factors", "extrinsic motivation factors" sub-dimensions and the whole scale according to teacher attitude. However, there was a significant difference in the "instrumental purposive motivation factors" sub-dimension. Vocabulary learning motivations of the students did not differ significantly only in the "extrinsic motivation factors" sub-dimension according to the daily book reading time, while it showed a significant difference in favor of those who had "more than 30 minutes" reading time in the sum of the other sub-dimensions and the scale. It was determined that the students' motivation to learn vocabulary did not make a significant difference according to the mother's daily book reading time. According to the father's daily reading time, it was determined that there was a significant difference in favor of those with "less than 15 minutes" and "more than 30 minutes" daily reading time in the "extrinsic motivation factors" sub-dimension and the whole scale. Finally, it has been determined that there is a moderately positive and significant relationship between primary school students' attitudes towards reading and their total scores of vocabulary learning motivations.