Students' Attitudes and Motivation towards Technology in a Turkish Language Classroom

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate adult learners’ approaches towards Turkish Language (TL) and examine learners’ outlooks towards the use of digital technologies for learning. It will also evaluate the impact of the Language Lab’s model on learners’ language achievement. Language Lab model is a system that is used for learning languages by using technology. It comprises a teacher and student console. The role of the teacher console is to offer the control purposes while the student console is given the facility to obtain the lessons that have been recorded. They are also required to listen to the pronunciations. An example of the Language Lab is the digital language lab (Saxena, 2012).The research questions of the study were based on whether attitudes towards digital technologies varied based on different backgrounds (i.e linguistic, educational, etc). There was also an analysis of whether the implementation of Language Lab’s model motivated the Turkish as a Second or Foreign Language (TSL/FL) learners of Adult Education Programs (AEP) to continue their studies. During this assessment procedure, it was identified that students used varied technological tools (Kahoot and Facebook) that motivated them to learn foreign languages in an efficient way. In conclusion, it can be affirmed that with the adoption and the execution of the above stated technological tools, the approaches of the students changed by a considerable degree in learning TL within the classroom setting. It is thus worth mentioning that the findings of this study can encourage the TL teachers to use technology in their classes in order to turn them into more autonomous, student-centered teachers using an effective language method in TL acquisition.