Analysis of Young Learners’ and Teenagers’ Attitudes to English Language Learning

Abstract

Attitudes begin to occur with the child’s birth and develop with the effects of his/her parents, peers, and the environment (Brown, 1994). Along with that, the attitudes have a significant effect on how much language learners become interested in learning (Inal & Evin, 2006). That’s to say, each language learner has the potential to develop different kinds of attitudes towards language learning. The present study focused on the attitudes of Turkish young learners and teenagers towards English Language Learning (ELL). It aimed to find out whether the attitudes of young learners change when they begin to be teenagers and whether the results correlate with the assumptions. If they correlate, the possible reasons behind that were tried to be named for these changes. Moon (2011) claims that compared to young learners, teenagers are inclined to lose their desire for language learning and they could be less motivated. In line with the statement of Moon (2011), the current study displayed that teenagers began to develop more negative attitudes towards ELL, losing their enthusiasm and motivation for ELL for various reasons. The implications of these results on education settings in Turkey were discussed and commented at the end of the paper.