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A Study On Correlation Between EFL Learners' Attitudes Toward Target Culture Learning And Their Target Language And Culture Achievement

Posted on:2010-10-13Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:P JiangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360275450905Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
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There are many theories and hypotheses concerning the relation between EFL learners' attitudes toward target culture learning and their target language and culture achievement.Morgan(1993:63) holds that "pupils' attitudes to the foreign language that they are learning or to the foreign culture(s) with which it is associated are recognized as crucial to language learning success."Ellis(1994:200) hypothesizes that "in general,positive attitudes toward L2,its speaker,and its culture can be expected to enhance learning and negative attitudes to impede learning." Many other scholars,such as Hu Wenzhong(1994),put forward similar hypotheses as well.However,there are not many empirical studies supporting the truthfulness of the above-mentioned theories and hypotheses.Then,this is the reason why the present study was conducted,of which the purpose is to explore the correlation between university EFL learners' attitudes toward target culture learning and their target language and culture achievement.Another purpose of the study is to find out how EFL learners' attitudes toward target culture learning influence their target language and culture achievement.Totally,60 non-English majors from the School of Environmental Engineering in Jiangsu University received one-year language and culture teaching and were the subjects of this cross-sectional study.The reason why the present study is a cross-sectional one instead of a longitudinal one is that the aim for this study is to "sample the participants' thoughts,behaviours,or emotional stances(attitudes) at one particular point in time"(Dornyei,2005:194),which is the goal of cross-sectional study,rather than to "observe the participants for an extended period in order to detect changes and patterns of development over time..."(Keeves,1994),which is the aim of longitudinal study.According to Stern's(1983) and Ellis's(1994) classification of attitude,EFL learners' attitudes toward target culture learning in the present study consist of three components:EFL learners' attitudes toward British/Americans,EFL learners' attitudes toward British/American culture and EFL learners' attitudes toward the learning of British/American culture.Those three components are also the three independent variables in the study.The dependent variable is EFL learners' target language and culture achievement.With the employment of three instruments—the questionnaire on Likert-scale,the target language and culture achievement test and the interview,the present study was carried out both quantitatively and qualitatively.The quantitative study included the questionnaire and the target language and culture achievement test.The qualitative study was conducted with semi-structured interview.First,the questionnaire in the present study was a category-based one and the items in it were chosen from Gardner and Lambert's(1972) "Attitudinal and Motivational Scales" on language and culture learning and Schmidt and Watanabe's(2001) "Questionnaire Items" on language and culture learning.Second,Wang Zhenya's(1990) target culture achievement test on British/American culture,together with the subjects' Final English Exam(with test items from the National College English Test-4 of different years) as the target language achievement test,formed the target language and culture achievement test. Finally,interviews were conducted with three high-score achievers and three low-score achievers of the target language and culture achievement test.Summary of the findings of the study is presented below.By employing Reliability analysis,the internal consistency of the three independent variables is confirmed.With the adoption of Pearson correlation analysis,the results of the study indicated that there was positive and significant correlation between the dependant variable(EFL learners' target language and culture achievement) and the three independent variables: Independent Variable One(EFL learners' attitudes toward British/Americans)—r =.294,p<.05;Independent Variable Two(EFL learners' attitudes toward British/American culture)—r=.235,p<.05 and Independent Variable Three(EFL learners' attitudes toward the learning of British/American culture)—r=.368,p<.01. The results proved the truthfulness of Morgan's(1993:63) theory and Ellis's(1994: 200) hypothesis.Stepwise regression analysis showed that all the three independent variables contribute to the predicting of the dependent variable.Finally,the interview results suggested that EFL learners' curiosity about and appreciation of British/American culture and their interest in the learning of British/American culture, etc.greatly enhanced their target language and culture learning.At the same time,EFL learners' strong ethnocentrism,their prejudice against British/Americans and their indifference to the learning of British/American culture impeded their target language and culture learning.Moreover,it was interesting to find that although one of the top-score achievers held negative attitudes toward target culture learning,he was still a successful language and culture learner.This supported Lanoue's(1991) theory that in some cases,learners' negative attitudes toward some aspects may not seriously affect their language learning if they have other strong reasons for learning.The study also presents pedagogical suggestions,from the perspective of attitude, in three aspects:syllabus,teaching materials and teachers.In syllabus-designing,the importance of the fostering of EFL learners' positive attitudes toward target culture learning should be emphasized.In the choice of teaching materials,materials that shallowly or even wrongly present the target culture or materials that have the potential of producing EFL learners' negative attitudes toward target culture learning,should be avoided.What's more,foreign language teachers should create opportunities for the fostering of EFL learners' positive attitudes toward target culture learning.Results of the present study are valuable for the necessity of the fostering of EFL learners' attitude in the process of culture teaching and learning.However,with limited time and space,there are deficiencies in the study,so future recommendations are provided.
Keywords/Search Tags:Attitude, Target culture learning, Intercultural communicative competence, Target language and culture achievement test, Correlation analysis
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