The relationship between secondary school students' value preferences and their attitudes of English as a foreign language course

The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between the value preferences of secondary school students studying in different high schools and their attitudes towards the English course. For this purpose, the questions of whether there is a difference in students' attitudes towards English lesson in terms of various variables, whether there is a differentiation in terms of various variables in their value preferences, to what extent there is a relationship between students' value preferences and their attitudes towards English lesson, and to what extent students' value preferences explain their attitudes towards the English course was searched. The research was carried out using the relational scanning model, one of the quantitative research methods. "Schwartz Value Servey (SVS)" developed by Schwartz (1992) to determine students' value preferences, and "Attitude Scale Towards English" developed by Yanar (2008) was used to determine students' attitudes towards English. Frequency and percentage analysis to determine students' attitudes towards English and value preferences; two-factor ANOVA was used for repeated measures on a single factor to determine whether attitudes and value preferences differ by variables. Correlation analysis and regression analysis were used in order to determine whether there is a relationship between students' value preferences and attitudes towards English. As a result of the research, female students' cohesion (x̄ = 5.22, p = .006), traditionalism (x̄=6.82, p =, 003), universalism (x̄ = 10.00, p = .000), self-orientation (x̄ = 5.98, p = .004) and security (x̄ = 5.93, p =, 003) mean scores were found to be significantly higher than men. Besides, male students' benevolence (x̄ = 7.07, p = .000), stimulation (x̄ = 4.91, p =, 014), hedonism (x̄ = 3.48, p = .000) and the total mean score (x̄ = 241.64, p =, 013) was significantly higher than female students. In terms of age, only the power value scores (x̄ = 18.52, p =, 010) were found to be significantly different between students aged 13-15 and those aged 16 and over. When analyzed in terms of grade repetition, a meaningful difference was found between the compliance, universality, self-management, security value scores and total value scores of students who did not repeat the grade. Accordingly, the students who do not repeat the grade have compliance (x̄ = 22.09, p =, 005), universalism (x̄ = 45.21, p =, 003), self-direction (x̄ = 27.73, p =, 001), security (x̄ = 29.75, p =, 002) value point averages and value total scores (x̄ = 239.58, p =, 014) are found to be significantly higher than students who repeat a grade. Finally, when evaluated in terms of school type, it was concluded that there were differences in benevolence, universalism, self-direction, stimulation, hedonism, power and security values. When the relationships between students' value preferences and their attitudes towards learning English were examined, it was concluded that there was a relationship between the subscales of stimulation and power sub-value and total value scores and attitudes towards English lessons. No significant relationship was found between the values of conformity, tradition, benevolence, universalism, self-direction, hedonism, achievement, security and their attitudes towards English. However, a low level of significant relationship was found between the students' stimulation sub-value (p =, 004, r =, 109), power sub-value (p =, 003, r =, 113), total value scores (p =, 086, r =, 022) and their attitudes towards English. These results support the relationship between the value preferences stated above and the attitude towards the English course.