Parents’ and English Language Teachers' Views about Early Foreign Language Education in Turkey
Abstract
With
the technological developments, social, cultural and political relations among
countries have increased nowadays, and this has increased the interaction among
people. Therefore, countries which want to get knowledge about different
countries; to understand them and to improve their relations with them has
begun to place much more emphasis on foreign language education. Turkey, which
is a candidate country for EU membership, has gradually decreased the starting
age of foreign language learning. Firstly, it was decreased at the 4th grade of
primary schools, and recently it has decreased at the 2nd grade classes. This
study aims to give some information about the history of early foreign language
teaching both in the world and Turkey, and to describe the views of parents and
English language teachers of primary school students about the optimal age for
foreign language learning and early foreign language education after the recent
regulation change in Turkey. It is expected that the views of the English
language teachers may provide some information especially about the
deficiencies in early foreign language education, and that the views of the
parents may show what the parents’ attitudes and views about early foreign language
learning in Turkey are. A total of 205 EFL primary school teachers and 212
parents voluntarily participated in the study. Two different questionnaires
have been used to collect data for the research. In the light of the
questionnaires, it is concluded that teachers and parents attending the
research are in favor of early foreign language education, especially at
between the ages 4-7. It shows that the recent regulation change, which states
English courses will be started at the 2nd grade of the primary schools, is a
positive and valuable attempt for early foreign language education in Turkey
Keywords
foreign language,foreign language teaching,early foreign language education
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