Exploring the Relationship of Social Support with Expectancy and Value in Online Foreign Language Learning

Abstract

The Malaysian Education Development Plan 2015-2025 emphasizes the use of information technology and the transformation of the teaching and learning process. In order to transform the education system, this plan places global level online learning at the ninth leap by leveraging information technology to improve the quality of learning in Malaysia. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to determine the relationship of social support with expectancy and value in online foreign language learning among students of UiTM Melaka. Through a confirmatory factor analysis, the student understanding scale was validated in three dimensions: social support, value and expectancy in the practice of online foreign language learning. A total of 180 students from UiTM Melaka had been selected using the purposive sampling method using SPSS analysis. Correlation analysis shows that there is a moderate significant association between expectancy and social support 0.5. Meanwhile correlation between value and social support has been identified as a high significant 0.674, It is followed by expectancy and value with the correlation of 0.644. This result specified that the students of UiTM Melaka are not fully prepared mentally and physically for the online approach. However, most of them need support from lecturers to motivate them in online learning sessions especially for the hard subject. The future researchers should investigate or examine several factors other than expectancy and value that perhaps could affect student motivation during online learning.