The effects of attitudinal, motivational, and anxiety factors on the English language proficiency of Taiwanese senior high school students

The traditional language classroom has been geared toward cognitive instruction with little emphasis on understanding students' specific affective reactions toward studying the language. A review of literature reveals inconsistent results with respect to the strength of the relationship between language achievement and affective factors relevant to language learning, such as attitude, motivation, and anxiety.;The present study involved a stratified random sample of about 180 Taiwanese senior high school students, equivalent to American 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. The subjects were asked to respond to an eight-part questionnaire regarding language-learning attitude, motivation, and anxiety and to take the one-hundred-item English Placement Test.;The study examined a linear composite of six attitudinal, motivational, and anxiety factors related to language learning with respect to their predictive power on English language proficiency. It also investigated gender and grade-level effects on a linear composite of the same six outcome variables. Moreover, it investigated the relationship between English language proficiency and two orientation constructs and the relationship between English language proficiency and the time devoted to the study of English.;The results of the all-possible-regressions procedure indicated that the three-variable subset composed of Attitudes toward Learning English, Motivational Intensity to Learn English, and English Classroom Anxiety factors was the best reduced model generated from the six-variable full regression equation, with respect to predictive accuracy of English language proficiency. About 16% of the variance on the language outcome was attributable to the above three predictors. The results of the multivariate analysis of variance procedure indicated that male and female students differed from each other with respect to the composite of the six affective variables. Results of descriptive discriminant analysis furthermore indicated that the dimension that maximizes gender differentiation pertained to the "language learning motivation" variate predicated on the Interest in Foreign Languages, Attitudes toward Learning English, and Desire to Learn English factors. Three multivariate contrasts were conducted to investigate whether 10th, 11th, and 12th graders differed from one another with respect to a composite of the six affective variables. The results of the multivariate analysis of variance procedure indicated no grade-level effect for any of the three comparisons. Finally, the results of the Pearson correlation procedure indicated no substantial association between English language proficiency and integrative/instrumental orientation or the time the students devoted to the study of English during the week before the study.