Youth and the Study of Foreign Language: An Investigation of Attitudes

Abstract

This study was undertaken to assess the attitudes of elementary and middle school students toward foreign language (FL) study. A questionnaire, designed to measure student attitudes toward FL study and perceived parental support, was administered to 209 youth in grades three through eight, in two different school populations within the San Francisco Bay Area. The results of t‐tests show that students with home languages other than English demonstrated more positive attitudes toward FL and a higher degree of perceived parental support for their FL program than did students whose home language was English. There were no gender differences found on the total attitude score. However, a difference between the two school populations emerged, with students at School 1 scoring significantly higher on the attitude scale and reporting more parent support than students at School 2. The implications of the study are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided.

An Analysis of Learners’ Motivation and Attitudes toward Learning English Language at Tertiary Level in Turkish EFL Context

“…The studies demonstrate that learners in different contexts attributed a mixture of feelings toward English language and inconsistent attitudinal profiles have been revealed in the previous studies conducted on this crucial issue (Bidin et al, 2009;Cortes, 2002;Friedrich, 2000;Hang, 2009;Thomas, 2010;Young, 2006). Different factors influence attitudes of learners such as social environment, peers, instrumental reasons, culture, age, gender and achievement.…”

Measuring the Impact of Instruction in Intercultural Communication on Secondary Spanish Learners' Attitudes and Motivation

“…In their 1972 study of U.S. students of French, Gardner and Lambert found students to be more instrumentally motivated in communities where the language played a prominent role, whereas students who learned French in sociocultural settings that provided few opportunities to use the language outside of the classroom were largely integratively oriented—i.e., when the language is common in the community of learners, students may see it as a practical resource, especially for future employment, while those studying a language that is not commonly used in their social world may be doing so out of interest in the language and culture for their own sake. On the other hand, if students already have social connections to a language (such as family members who speak it, in the case of heritage learners), they may experience integrative motivation whether the language is commonly spoken or not: Cortés () found that “students [in California] with home languages other than English demonstrated more positive attitudes towards foreign languages” than their peers (p. 320).…”

“…Since the publication of this foundational work by Gardner and Lambert, many researchers have confirmed the connection between attitude and motivation 3 across a wide variety of languages, learning environments, and sociocultural contexts (MacIntyre, Mac-Master, & Baker, 2001;Muchnick & Wolfe, 1982;Syed, 2001;Wesely, 2012). Studies have investigated attitudes toward, and motivations for, second language study in relation to such variables as students' gender (Cochran et al, 2010), race (Moore, 2005), home language (Cort es, 2002), the target language variety (Donitsa-Schmidt, Inbar, & Shohamy, 2004), and sociopolitical processes such as globalization (D€ ornyei & Csizer, 2002). Other studies have empirically demonstrated not only the connection between attitudes and motivation, but also the impact of these factors on achievement in the second language classroom (Gardner, 1985;Hern andez, 2006;Yashima, Zenuk-Nishide, & Shimizu, 2004).…”

Learner Attitudes, Perceptions, and Beliefs in Language Learning

“…The possibility cannot be ruled out that students who have higher profi ciency, perhaps as a result of an unknown or unmeasured variable like access to better learning strategies or members of the target community, then have higher self-effi cacy. Finally, scholars should embrace when a relationship is not found when expected, and they should allow themselves to explore and interpret the reasons (see for instance the study by & Padilla, 1998) to more neutral or equal performance on attitudinal or motivational measures (Cortés, 2002;Heining-Boynton & Haitema, 2007). Other types of learner characteristics, particularly characteristics that identify learners with traditionally underrepresented populations in FL, have largely been disregarded in the recent literature.…”

“…Beyond heritage learners, groups defi ned by other learner characteristics have also been investigated in the literature, but much more infrequently. The differences between male and female learners of FLs have long been seen as important questions to pursue (see Spolsky, 1989), but recent published studies that focused on these topics (Kissau, 2006;Kissau, Kolano, & Wang, 2010) have largely been outnumbered by large-scale survey studies where gender was seen as one variable (see Cochran et al, 2010;Cortés, 2002;Heining-Boynton & Haitema, 2007;Shaaban & Ghaith, 2000;Sung & Padilla, 1998) or as something that had to be controlled for (Brantmeier, 2005). These large-scale survey studies have revealed a variety of fi ndings, ranging from strongly indicating more positive attitudes and valuing of FL study by girls (Cochran et al, 2010;Shaaban & Ghaith, 2000; Sung beliefs naturally suggests the adoption of a comparative framework, where participants are drawn from two or more learning settings and then compared.…”