Have we remained strangers to English? University Students Views of English as a Foreign Language

The delivery of instructional practice in the teaching of English at Turkish primary and secondary schools is considered problematic for a variety of reasons. This qualitative study aimed to explore this situation from the perspective of pre-service teachers enrolled in eight programmes at the faculty of education at a Turkish state university assuming that the participants would provide valuable insights based on their fresh language learning experiences and their emerging pedagogical content knowledge. For this reason an open-ended survey was developed. Seven hundred and sixty-two pre-service teachers responded, and semi-structured interviews with six participants were conducted. The results show that a considerable number of the participants appreciated the learning of English as valuable for their personal and professional development, but the actual use of English in their own lives was limited. Pointing to a variety of reasons for ineffective instruction of English in Turkey, the participants stressed flawed methodology, neglect of skills-based instruction and lack of extracurricular activities as hindrances to strengthen the learning of English in Türkiye. The results call for improvements in teacher education and attempts to disseminate the importance of extracurricular activities to strengthen instructional practices and the status of English in Türkiye.