Are the ELL students aware of their 21st century skills?

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the 21st century skills of the third and fourth year students studying at the Department of English Language and Literature of two Turkish state universities. Additionally, the levels of the 21st century skills of the students are aimed to be discovered. To this end, a case study was designed and conducted with 158 ELL students and 20 lecturers working at the same departments. The study was conducted in 2019-2020 academic year. The related literature was reviewed and two research instruments that would be used to collect the data were chosen accordingly. These instruments including a survey questionnaire for the students and a survey questionnaire for the lecturers were used to investigate the 21st century skills of ELL students. The quantitative analysis of the data revealed that the students of ELL departments of two Turkish state universities are aware of their own 21st century skills. Another conclusion relates to the results of the study indicate that although most of the students stated that they were using most of the 21 century skills, the lecturers did not approve of them. They stated that the students did not use different thinking techniques to create original ideas in their lives, evaluate new ideas by using analysis, work patiently to produce solutions to the problems, and they did not take steps to improve their skills. Additionally, they disagreed with the statements that the students listened to other’s opinion about a subject, had effective communication skills, adapted to different roles in their lives, were open to criticism, knew that learning was a lifelong process, knew that media was effective in directing people’s opinion, used appropriate media tools to get information and used technological tools to analyse information.