Learning starts with the birth of an individual, and the learning process is dependent on several factors during the life span of individuals. Family, environmental factors, social culture and traditions, education system, conditions, necessities, and teacher attitudes are the factors that direct the learning process. Learning is both an individual and a social process, and the traditions of learning and teaching are effective in this process. Learning and teaching habits are also dependent on a country’s teaching and learning tendencies or education system. However, this situation should not create the view that learning can be generalized as a single learning culture and is fixed. Just like the variety of individuals, learning habits hold individual differences, too. In other words, people have different learning habits and strategies, and these learning habits may change over time. When individuals think about the issue of learning, have a conscious comprehension of learning, or make conscious decisions on how they will learn in a successful way, their learning habits may change, and their motivation may increase. For learners (individuals), self-learning means taking the responsibility of learning, planning, analyzing, and evaluating; being able to identify their strengths and weaknesses; and being motivated to learn. To sum up, selflearning is a component of lifelong learning. Self-learning may take place both during and out of the formal education process. The importance of self-learning to the learners can be summarized as follows:

Supporting learner autonomy,

- Identifying and developing individuals’ own skills and competencies,

- Being able to follow the dynamic developments of the twenty-first century and information and communication technologies, and

- Increasing one’s own motivation. 

Concepts such as lifelong learning, motivation, self-learning, communicative competence, and learner autonomy play a central part in the current and contemporary education process. These key concepts are identified as important objectives in education. Students are at the center of this process because the self-learning habits of students are indispensable in the frame of identified objectives. Self-learning is undoubtedly significant for German language teacher candidates, too. The purpose of this study is to reveal the self-learning habits of German language teacher candidates in the sample of Trakya University. In accordance with this purpose, a questionnaire was administered in all classes of the German Language Teaching Department. In this context, the questionnaire aimed to identify German language teacher candidates’ self-learning habits and perspectives on self-learning itself. A total of 40 German language teacher candidates (32 females, 8 males) participated in the study. In each class from the first grade to the fourth grade, a total of 10 students were randomly chosen, and a total of 40 students answered the questionnaire to collect data. The number of participants was limited because open-ended questions were included, aside from the close-ended questions, in the questionnaire. Close-ended questions were analyzed by using SPSS and were evaluated in percentages. For open-ended questions, content analysis was performed. 

The findings of the study demonstrate that the keywords used by participants on self-learning were “interest,” “want,” and “effort.” Terms such as “identifying objects” or “taking responsibility” were expressed by only three participants. The self-learning habits emphasized mostly by the German language teacher candidates who participated in the study were note-taking, summarizing, writing sentences with the newly learned words, researching, vocabulary studies, and repetition. These findings indicate that the participants especially focused on writing skill among their self-learning habits. This finding shows that various learning styles and different learning methods should be allowed in the education process of students. Only in this way can students develop their skills, competences, and tendencies in the context of self-learning. As mentioned in the introduction part of the study, one of the most important objectives of the German Language Teaching Department is to help German language teacher candidates become competent in the linguistic, professional, and cultural dimensions. An especially crucial skill for German language teacher candidates is linguistic competence (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) in the teaching learning dimension. With regard to their evaluation of language levels, more than half of the participants (58%) classified their language levels as intermediate. Another important detail to note is that the number of participants who regard their language levels as weak or low (30%) was not scarce. In this respect, German language teacher candidates inevitably become more conscious about selflearning to develop their German language skills. One of the significant outcomes of this study is that German language teacher candidates evaluate the self-learning process as important. However, they possess a limited perspective on the context and need guidance and encouragement regarding self-learning. For this reason, one of the most important duties of the German Language Teaching Education Department is to arrange environments where active learning will be maintained for students, learning objectives will be determined, and taking responsibility will be specified and guided.