REASONS BEHIND YOUNG LEARNERS’ LEARNING OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

English has become a compulsory lesson starting at the second grade in Turkey while younger learners are growingly introduced to it at earlier ages through various pre-schools, day-care programs and private courses. This descriptive study focuses on young learners’ self-reported reasons for learning English and other foreign languages. Twenty children (11-12 year-olds) who have been studying for over two years at a private language school in Antalya participated in the study through structured face-to-face interview questions. After completing the recordings, the data were transcribed and translated into English. Content analysis was used to analyze the data. Results of the study have shown that students want to learn Spanish as a foreign language after English. In addition to these languages, French and Russian were counted as the languages students wanted to learn as foreign languages. This study also found that the participants were mostly extrinsically motivated as learners. It is also noteworthy that young learners who participated in the study used an emotional language while describing the language(s) they were learning or while mentioning their reasons for studying these languages. Although the study is limited to a small group of young learners, it is important in that it is one of the first studies in the field and within the context of our country.