Social attitudes toward teaching English at high schools in Gaziantep

The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitudes of the students, parents and English teachers toward teaching English. This research was conducted at 26 high schools in Gaziantep in 2000. A questionnaire consisting of two parts for the teachers and parents and three parts for the students was used as the data collecting instruments for the research. In the first part of the questionnaire, there are questions related with personal traits of teachers, students and parents. In the second part, there is a Likert type attitude scale. The questionnairefor teachers and parents was given to 85 teachers and 205 parents and all of them were evaluated. Also, 414 students' questionnaires were taken into evaluation. The significance of differences between means was analysed using "t" test, Anova (one-way analysis of variance), ScheffS test and the data related to the opinions of the students were analysed by utilising frequency distribution on percentages. The validity was assured by means of factor analysis procedure and the reliability was assured using Cronbach Alpha measure. All these statistical procedures were carried out using SPSS software (10.0 version) in windows for IBM platform. Moreover, it was thought that the theoretical substructure of the study would be needed in order to reach sound conclusion of the study. So, the improvement and problems in foreign language teaching were taken into consideration from a chronological perspective and research findings were evaluated from this perspective. The findings of the study indicated that Teaching English is not in accordance with social attitudes and it does not seem to meet the requirements and demands of the society. However, there is a statistically significant difference between the attitudes of parents and students.Key Words: Social attitudes, foreign language, English teaching and learning