Students’Attitudes towards Foreign Languages

Abstract

This paper analyses similarities and differences in attitudes and beliefs towards learning the German and the Italian language. The testing tool used for evaluating the attitudes is a questionnaire composed in accordance with the questionnaires used for examining attitudes towards foreign languages. The obtained results indicate that the students of both languages highly agree with the statement that the knowledge of foreign languages leads to a better social status, more successful socialisation and benefit in one's professional career. In addition, they highly agree with the statement that the teaching materials are miscellaneous, but would nevertheless want the materials to include more elements of the domicile culture. Furthermore, the results also indicate a high level of confidence in speaking both languages and a substantial level of awareness regarding the need to speak both languages. The analysis confirmed a significant difference between the learners of Italian and German; the learners of German perceive the language as more difficult than Italian. However, such subjective evaluation does not have an adverse effect on the attitudes towards the German language.

Examination of attitudes to learning and educational stress in prospective primary school teachers: İzmir-Buca sample

“…Since attitudes can be effective in learning as mentioned above, there have been studies about effects of attitudes on learning in various fields of study including science, mathematics, Turkish language, learning a foreign language, use of technology and acquisition of communication skills (Akamca and Hamurcu, 2005;Ünal and Ergin, 2006;Özgen and Pesen, 2008;Bosede, (2014) ;Yaman, 2014;Harb et al, 2014;Kovac and Zdilar, 2017;Wan and Lee, 2017). Also, there have been many studies showing that attitudes towards teaching as an occupation varied with gender, field of study, age and personality (Oral, 2004;Doğan and Çoban, 2009;Başbay et al, 2009;Bulut, 2009;Demirtaş et al, 2011;Bulut, 2011;Aslan and Yalçın, 2013;Edwards, 2014).…”

Improving oral communication skills of English learners with voice messages and short videos

“…Most students in this study look forward to expressing themselves in L2. According to Kovac & Mrsic (2017) learners' attitudes towards speaking a second language increase their selfconfidence, which is related to the student's behavior. Hence, a positive impact for students is increased self-confidence during and after using the WhatsApp application.…”