A study on the attitudes of young learners towards learning English

Teaching young learners (TYL) has been on the agenda of educationists for a long time. Therefore, a lot of investigations have been carried out about the features and psychology of young learners and techniques for how best to teach young learners. In line with this, it is also important to know the attitudes of young learners towards learning English. In the current study, our main concern is to investigate the nature of young learners? attitudes towards learning English, and whether these attitudes have any relationship with their language proficiency. A descriptive research study was conducted with young learners. 300 fifth grade students aged 11 ? 12 from 4 different primary schools in Adıyaman participated in the study. For the purposes of this study, data were collected by administering an attitude questionnaire, and a critical incident questionnaire. Questionnaires were analyzed by using SPSS 11.0 (Statistical Package for Social Sciences). Descriptive analysis was performed and frequencies and percentages were calculated. This study mainly investigated the relationship between the students? English proficiency levels of students at two different schools with the lowest and highest average of scores in English classes and their attitudes towards learning English. Thus, individual results are not in the framework of the study.The results of this study revealed that students have positive attitudes towards learning English, and that there is not a significant relationship between the attitudes of students and their proficiency level.