Technical and vocational high school students' attitudes to language learning in Iskenderun

English as an international means of communication is a language appreciated by individuals to keep pace with today?s rapidly changing world. Similarly, students need to learn English to get benefit from it in their future lives. Even though English has been taught starting from primary school, students attending vocational and technical high school seem to face some problems in developing language skills. Additionally, there appears lack of enough research in this field. Therefore, the purpose of the study primarily was to determine the attitudes of 10th grade vocational and technical high school students toward learning English as a foreign language in relation to school section, school type, gender, department, taking English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses, and purpose to learn English.This study was conducted with 472 10th grade vocational and technical high school students attending three schools in İskenderun, Hatay. The research was designed by utilizing a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods. A questionnaire including 30 items on attitudes was used to collect data. The quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS 17.0 statistical program and content analysis was used in order to interpret the qualitative data.Analysis of the quantitative data revealed that vocational high school students had mildly positive attitudes toward learning English. A statistically significant difference was found between Anatolian high school sections and high school sections of vocational high schools in terms of attitudes toward learning English. Students in Anatolian high school section were observed to have mildly positive attitudes toward learning English while those in high school section to have neutral attitudes. In terms of gender, a statistically significant difference was not found between females and males. Females were observed to have mildly positive attitudes toward learning English while males exhibited neutral attitudes. In relation to school type, department, taking English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses, and purpose to learn English, a significant difference was found among students? attitudes toward learning English.Analysis of the qualitative data revealed that although vocational school students considered learning English important for instrumental reasons, they did spend no necessary efforts to improve their English.