The Effects of More Humanistic Approaches to Language Teaching and Hemispheric Dominance on Students’ Academic Achievements and Their Attitudes towards Learning English

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to determine the effects of the language curricula designed in compliance with the principles of Neuro Linguistic programming, and brain dominance on the students’ academic achievement and their attitudes towards learning English. The population of this study was 52 students (25 females, 27 males) studying at an Anatolian high school preparatory class in the spring term of the 2004-2005 academic year. The research presented in this study was based on a randomized pre-test post-test control group design. In this research, an attitude scale which was designed by Altunay (2002) consisting of 17 items, and whose Cronbach Alpha coefficient reliability was .96, was used. The Cronbach Alpha reliability of the brain dominance inventory, which was translated and adapted into Turkish by Kök (2005) was .87. In addition to the two scales listed above, to assess the achievement of the students, they were given a 30-item multiple choice achievement test, the  KR-20 reliability of which was .72. In the analysis of the data, t-test was administered. The significance level of the tests was .05. As the findings suggest, no significant difference was found between the left-brain dominant students in the experimental group and those in the control group. However, there was a statistically significant difference between the right brain students in the experimental group and those in the control group in favor of the experimental group, both in academic achievement and in their attitudes towards learning English.