The investigation of secondary school students' failure reasons in learning English (Bartin/Ulus sample)

The aim of this study is to determine the failure reasons of the secondary school students in Ulus district of Bartın province. In this study, the views of 657 secondary school students about failure reasons in teaching English and relationships between gender, students' families' income and studying time of English of students and students' views were analyzed. Descriptive method was used in the study. The study was carried out with all secondary school students (5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grade students) in Ulus district of Bartın in the 2014-2015 school year. In order to determine the failure reasons of the secondary school students, a questionnaire named "The Failure Reasons of the Secondary School Students in Learning English" developed by the researcher was conducted. The analyses were done by using statistical package programs. Percentage and frequency values of students' views were presented. The relationships between gender, students' families' income and studying time of English of students and students' views were analyzed through Chi-Square tests. In this study which aims to determine the views of secondary school students about failure reasons in teaching English, students answered as Agree to almost all questions. According to Chi-Square tests, it was found a significant difference between gender and students' views in 17 questions, between students' families' income and students' views in 17 questions and between studying time of English of students and students' views in 29 questions. The conclusions can be summarized as: students have some difficulties in understanding reading texts because they do not read much except from the lessons, they have difficulties in pronunciation, they have difficulties in writing because the syntaxes of English and Turkish are different, they have difficulties in listening because technological opportunities are not used enough in their lessons, they have difficulties in speaking because they do not make practice enough, they have difficulties in memorizing words because visual materials are not used sufficiently in their lessons, they do not understand grammar subjects because they do not have enough grammar knowledge in their mother tongue, they are not interested in course books, the schools are technologically insufficient and English lessons are not enough to learn English effectively. It can be recommended that English lessons should be increased, the Ministry of Education should supply visual educational materials, the schools should be made technologically sufficient and language teaching should be divided in four skill areas.