Do Contextual Factors and Gender Influence Students’ Language Attitude in Learning English?

Abstract

Language attitude and orientation are considered as one of the most important components in the success of learning a target language. The learning context in which students learn foreign language is also considered as variable which contribute to promote teaching and learning process. In addition, individual variable such as gender has its role in students' foreign language learning process. Such argument inspired the researchers of this study to investigate the attitude and orientation of the non-English major students in Mulawarman University towards learning English, and to know if their attitudes are influenced by their gender and contextual factors. This study is quantitative in nature and two sets of questionnaire were used in collecting the data. The findings of this study may be helpful for EFL teachers and curriculum designers in terms of giving additional arguments on the imperative of teaching English course to non-English major students in university context in Indonesia. In addition, it is hoped that this study will broaden the interest of other researchers and teachers to find out how language attitudes and orientation of non-English major students and their correlated factors (i.e. gender, contextual factors may contribute to students' successfulness in learning English.