The relationship between students attitudes towards the language and expression class and their academic achieements (The case of Çankaya district)

The current study investigates the effect of secondary school 10th grade students? attitudes towards the Language and Expression class on their academic achievements in the Language and Expression class. The main aim of the study is to determine whether there is any relationship between the attitudes towards the Language and Expression class and the achievements in this class through finding out whether gender, socio-economic status, parents? educational background, occupations, and reading habits affect students? reading habits.The participants of the study were 10th grade 530 students of 5 secondary schools that were selected using simple random sampling method in Çankaya district in Ankara. ?Attitudes Scale towards the Language and Expression Class?, developed by the researcher, was used as the data collection instrument. The data collected were analyzed using SPSS 15.0.The results of the study revealed that there was a statistically significant difference between the students? attitudes towards the Language and Expression class and gender, socio-economic status, parents? educational background, occupations, reading habits, and the students? reading habits. The results also indicated that there was a positive linear relationship between the students? attitudes towards the Language and Expression class and their academic achievements.Keywords: Turkish Language Education, Attitude, Academic Achievement