A phenomenological study on highschool students' perceptions towards English as a foreign language

The main aim of this study is to find out how high school students perceive the concept of English as a foreign language and if the perceptions of the students differ depending on gender, weekly course hours, school type and overseas experience. The study group which has been performed with qualitative research method consists of 400 students taking English course in different private and public schools in İstanbul in 2016-2017 academic year. The participants of the study were chosen randomly from 10th grade. The qualitative data were acquired through a word association test (WAT). Data obtained from WAT have been analyzed with content analysis method. The students were expected to write ten words related to key word in the first stage and explain how they associate the key word with the responses in the second stage. In consequence of content analysis 14 categories were obtained. These categories are tourism, negative expressions, occupation, social media, English course, culture and art, positive expressions, examinations, university, famous people, foreign concepts, social life, colonialism and sport. The results of the study indicate that students' perceptions towards English as a foreign language are various and different. It was determined that the most indicated concepts of the students are travelling, England, America and tourist. Although the majority of the students think that English as a foreign language is common, important and essential, it is stressful, boring, difficult and complicated language. Consequently, some suggestions have been given for English language learning regarding different perceptions of the students.