| Summary: | The course “Teaching English to Young Learners” has always been one of
the most important courses of the ELT programs. Council of Higher Education
changed the course hours from 4 hours each two hours of which were theoretical
and practical to 3 hours which will basically deal with theoretical issues. As
the course will cover some theoretical issues, this study aims to determine the
most preferred topics to be taught in this course. The study follows
mixed-methods sequential exploratory research design procedures. To form the
questionnaire, ELT curriculums of 42 state universities were content analysed in
the qualitative part of the study. Then, frequency tables and topics were
composed. Eight topics were added to the 51 main topics after having an
interview with two experts in the field. Lastly, the final table of topics for
the questionnaire was formed and the questionnaire was created in Google Forms.
In the quantitative part of the study, the data has been collected from 266
teachers, teacher educators and pre-service teachers from different cities of
Turkey. The findings of this study showed that the participants think using
visual items, games and songs, developing children’s speaking skill and
defining young learners and their characteristics are the most important topics
for Teaching English to Young Learners. While participants’ work status
revealed some significant differences in their’ topic preferences, there were
no significant differences in terms of their teaching experience. At the end of
the study, some suggestions for ELT and for further studies were provided.
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