Özet:

This qualitative study aims to reveal pre-service English language teachers’ perceptions concerning ‘teaching English to young learners’. It has been carried out with the participation of 83 4th grade undergraduate students attending the English Language Teaching Programme at Ondokuz Mayıs University. The data have been collected via a metaphor form with an open-ended statement as “Teaching English to young learners is ……… because …………”. The gathered data have been analysed through content analysis in stages coding and elimination, category development, validity and reliability, interpretation of the data. During the preliminary analysis of the gathered metaphors 11 of them were omitted due to the missing parts on the form. The remaining 72 metaphors were put into a similarity analysis revealing that 31 different metaphors in total were produced by the participants. The metaphors fun and turning-point have appeared to be the ones with the highest frequency. Among the other metaphors with high frequency are joy, challenge, difficulty, and hard-work. As for the categories yielded by the study, the frequency list is led by ‘an enjoyable process’, which is followed by ‘a demanding process’, ‘an important process’, ‘a creative process’, and ‘an easy process’ consecutively. Related discussions are presented in the light of these findings.

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