Abstract:

In foreign language education, students can only attain high level of proficiency if they hold the responsibility of their own learning because they are not exposed to the foreign language enough in daily life. In this study it is aimed to examine perception of learner autonomy in high school students learning English as foreign language. This research was designed with descriptive survey model and its population consists of 16196 students studying at state high schools at 2015-2016 academic year in Nilüfer, Bursa. The sample involving 378 students was constituted by using the technique of proportional categorized illustration. ‘‘Autonomy Perception Scale, which was developed by Bayat (2007) and demographic information form were used for collecting data. In order to analyze the data, a series of descriptive statistics, t test and oneway ANOVA tests have been employed. The results of this study demonstrated that the participants’ levels of autonomy perception were moderate. In comparisons in terms of gender variable, significant difference has not been observed according to the whole scale autonomy perception but boys tended to have higher scores than girls. On the other hand, high school students’ autonomy perception significantly differed based on the some variables such as taking part in social activities, grade, type of school, parents’ education level. Teachers should encourage the promotion of learner autonomy by applying active learning techniques in the classrooms.