A case study of perceptions and attitudes of 7th grade English language learners toward classroom practices for the development of student autonomy

Autonomy is a crucial issue in language teaching because the world of education needs the language learners who can learn how to learn a language independently for a life-long process. At the same time, the concept of autonomy is popular since it removes the restriction of place and time for language learning. However, developing autonomy of language learners may take a long time. So, before developing autonomy in language classes, it is needed to learn about the autonomy perceptions and attitudes of our language learners. The purpose of this specific twelve-week case study was to find out autonomy perceptions and attitudes towards activities fostering autonomy of 7th grade EFL students studying at Hacı Halil Arpaç Secondary School in Mersin, Turkey. Another purpose of this case study was to find out the changes of language learners' autonomy perceptions and attitudes after the study. In the study, qualitative research method was used. As a source of data, Semi-structured Interviews, Activity Perception Questionnaire and Classroom Observation Checklists were administered. The results were discussed by content analysis.