Abstract
The Relation Between Turkish University Students' Educational and Social Background and their Attitude toward Self-directed Learning and their Attendance at Self-access Centers Abstract In the last decade the focus of EFL/ESL has been on the learner and the learning experience of the learner. Teaching learners how to learn and how to direct their learning has.. been the focus qf attention. In other words, teaching them, how to learn vocabulary rather than teaching lists of vocabulary words is more beneficial `for the students. It not only gives one the responsibility of one's learning, but helps one be aware of one's learning experiences. In this framework, the aim of this study was to see how Turkish university students felt about self-directed learning and whether they used self-access centers. The study compared the attitudes and the attendance rates of two different groups of students regarding the high school they graduated from - private/Anatolian vs. state high schools. The study also focused on social background factors, such as department, proficiency level, length of time they have been at the prep school, being scholarship or not, parents' level of education, and sex. The starting hypothesis was that there was a relation between all these educational and social background factors, and attitude and attendance of subjects.The study was carried out among university prep school students who were learning English for Academic purposes at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. The subjects were given a questionnaire, including an attitude scale. To determine the attitudes of the subjects, a rating scale which consisted of several situations was used. They were also asked whether they attended each of the self- access centers at' Bilkent University.: To measure attitude a t-test followed by a one way Anova was run. The only significant difference was found among the students of different departments. For attendance a -chi-square was employed. The results of the data analysis showed that there was a significant difference between graduates of different high schools, but not in the expected direction. An inconsistency in the students' responses was observed in the results. Nearly all the students said they like.the idea of being self-directed, but most of them did not use the self-access centers. Suggestions were made for solving this very problem and for doina further research on this issue.
