Puerto Rican 9th grade public -school student attitudes towards English as a second language

This research project compared mean scores for political affiliation (pro-statehood, pro-independence, or pro-commonwealth), level of parental education (elementary school, high school diploma or college degree) time spent in the mainland (less than 3 months, between three and twelve months or more than 12 months) and gender (male or female) against indexes and subscales of the Espejo de Actitudes, a Spanish-language version of selected indexes and subscales of the Attitude-Motivation Test Battery. The indexes tested comprised the Instrumental Index, the Motivation Index, the Instrumental Index and the English Anxiety Index. The component subscales of the Integrative Index were the Attitudes Towards Americans, Attitudes Towards Foreigners and the Integrative Orientation. The Motivation Index comprised the Interest in Foreign languages, Desire to Learn English and Motivational Intensity subscales. The English Class Anxiety and English Use Anxiety subscales composed the English Anxiety Index. Results indicated that political affiliation, time spent on the mainland and gender had no significant differences in mean scores on any of the Indexes or subscales. Level of Parental Education yielded two potentially significant results. Students whose parents have only reached an elementary-school level of education as their highest education level attained might be statistically more likely to have lower scores on the Integrative Index and the Interest in Foreign Languages subscales. Given the limited number of cases corresponding to the elementary-education level of the parental education predictor variable (n = 1), which prevented SPSS from being able to conduct post-hoc analysis, the more prudent and responsible conclusion to draw is that Puerto Rican 9th grade public school students whose parents only have an elementary school education are potentially statistically more likely to have a lower score on the Integrative Index of the Espejo de Actitudes..;Attitude towards foreigners was a significant predictor of affective reaction to learning English to a marked degree while overall motivation levels and overall value of learning English for integrative reasons were also significant predictors with a moderate degree of correlation. Attitudes towards Americans, overall motivation levels and overall value of learning English for integrative reasons were significant predictors of desire to learn English with a high degree of correlation while self-reported effort was a significant predictor of desire to learn English with a moderate degree of correlation. Integrative orientation, English use anxiety and the instrumental value of learning English were significant predictors of English class anxiety a high levels of correlation. The instrumental value of learning English, English class anxiety and integrative orientation were significant predictors of English use anxiety with high levels of correlation.;Overall, results indicate that Puerto Rican 9th grade public-school students have slightly positive overall levels of motivation to learn English and a neutral attitude toward the instrumental and integrative value of learning English. Their level of English anxiety in the classroom and when using English in general is equally neutral. They have a moderately positive interest in foreign languages and self-report moderate levels of effort applied to learn English. They have a slightly positive desire to learn English and a slightly favorable attitude towards Americans. They have a neutral attitude towards foreigners, but have a moderately negative affective reaction to learning English.