Abstract:

Teachers’ lives are affected by life conditions, emotional expectations, and their relations with administrators and students as well as crowded classrooms, workload and administrative duties, which may cause burnout. A follow-up study of a previous study related to the causes of burnout, the purpose of this study is to reach in depth information regarding the causes of burnout in a university setting and to provide solutions to decrease the burnout levels as well as eliminating the factors related to them. In this study, a personal and work data questionnaire was used to provide background information about the participants. At the same time, a Turkish version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Version was utilized to identify the burnout levels of the participants. Later, an interview, which included questions related to the causes of burnout in the setting of the study was conducted with the participants who experienced a higher level of burnout. As a whole, this research, which is among the very first at tertiary level in an EFL setting in Turkey, sheds light on the causes of burnout experienced by university language teachers, provides their own views about its causes, and suggests solutions supported by the related literature.

Keywords:

Burnout, language teachers.