Abstract:

English is the lingua franca used across borders today, and many countries teach English as a second language to students in schools. For this reason, students' English achievement is important for their future lives. In this study, fourth-grade students' perceptions of English were examined in terms of their achievement in mathematics and Turkish. 42 fourth-grade students participated in the research, which was carried out in the phenomenology design, one of the qualitative research methods. The data of the research were collected through mind maps and semi-structured interviews. As a result of the research, the analysis results of the mind maps showed that the students' English perceptions were gathered under the themes of school, world language, affective characteristics and social life. As a result of the analysis, the codes that emerged in the school theme were determined as English words, English lesson teacher, homework, word memorization, intensive lesson hours, examination-test, online course, English books-dictionary, game, translation and pronunciation. World language theme consisted of learning a foreign language, abroad-foreign country, tourist, speaking a foreign language, famous people, famous places, alphabet and common language codes; affective characteristics theme consisted of difficult-boring, necessary, dislike, mother, love, excitement-enthusiasm and responsibility codes. Social life theme included the codes of technology, English song, new culture, business life and shopping-trade codes. When students' perceptions of English were examined in terms of mathematics and Turkish achievement; it has been found that students with low achievement levels in mathematics and Turkish mostly associate English with the theme of life, while students with high achievement in both courses mostly associate English with the theme of school. The results of the research were discussed in the light of related studies.

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