Pre-Service ELT Teachers’ Perceptions of Media Literacy in Turkey

Abstract

In a media-saturated society, it is becoming extremely difficult for audience, especially the young ones, to discern between positive and negative, fact and fiction, true and false, reliable and unreliable content in the media. In such an environment, Media Literacy, the ability to critically analyze, evaluate and discern media content and its production are imperative. Through a survey with participation of 183 undergraduate ELT students from Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University (Turkey), this paper attempts to find out media literacy perceptions of pre-service teachers based on the theories provided by the scholars in this field as well as to explore the relationship between Media Literacy perceptions of the students and their age, gender and class levels. Results showed that pre-service teachers attending English Language Teaching Department are eminently aware of the concepts of Media Literacy, no significant statistical differences were observed between the genders and among classes, the frequency of participants’ use of media forms is not so high in comparison with their level of Media Literacy perception, they are highly aware of the benefits of Media Literacy to teaching and learning English Language.