The effect of the usage of station technique on academic achievement, attitudes and retention in teaching English

Being able to follow the scientific and technological development of the 21th century and to keep up with the changes makes it necessary to use a foreign language as "lingua franca". Being aware of the importance of foreign languages has resulted in new trends in how to teach foreign languages, and so researches have started to be applied related to the new methods and techniques. In this research, it has been noticed that there is not sufficient research related to the usage of station technique in teaching a foreign language, so it is aimed to determine the effects of station technique usage on the academic achievement, attitudes towards the lesson and retention. In the research the mixed method, in which both quantitative and qualitative data are used, was preferred and an experimental design was applied. The research was conducted in Asım Sürücü Secondary School in Elazığ and continued 12 lesson hours during the first term of 2014-2015 education year. The research was applied in two groups, one of which is experimental group and the other one is control group. The experimental group consists of 15 6th grade students and the control group consists of 13 6th grade students. For the quantitative part of the research, an achievement test and an attitude scale were developed by the researcher as data collection tool. For the qualitative part of the research, data were gained by means of prepared interview questions. The findings of the research have shown that while the usage of station technique in teaching English has influenced academic achievement and retention positively, it has no influence on improving attitudes towards lesson. As a result of the research, it has been suggested that there should be more research focusing on the station technique usage in teaching foreign language; there can be some researches analyzing the effect of station technique usage on anxiety, motivation and active engagement to the lesson and there can be some researches focusing on different grades and lessons other than 6th grade English lesson related to the station technique usage.