Student Attitudes To The Learning Of English In Senior Middle School

This study, using a questionnaire, investigated the attitudes middle school students held towards the learning of English. The study was initiated by two reasons: (1) middle school teachers are often unaware of and misunderstand student attitudes towards learning English and they do not know how to motivate students to improve their students' attitude towards the learning of English, therefore, exerting negative impact on English teaching and learning; (2) the second language acquisition (SLA) theorists' understanding of the role of the attitudes is limited, and it was expected that our understanding of attitudes would help students become autonomous learners.The questionnaire used in the study was designed to measure students' attitudes toward the learning of English. It was administered to 120 senior grade two students in a senior middle school. The completed questionnaires were then scored, and the information was coded to facilitate computer analysis. The students' English achievements were measured by the final test scores of the second term. All the students from Grade-Two were tested by the same exam papers. They tested the students' three skills: listening, reading and comprehension, and writing. The data were analyzed using SPSS 11.0 for Windows. The mean scores and standard deviations were computed. T-test outcomes for each item were used to analyze the students' attitudes from several aspects, such as motivation, interest, gender, experience, attitudes of teachers, parents and peers, syllabus and curriculum, effort, expectancy, valence, and perception of ability. The correlation analysis between attitudes and achievements was also carried out by using T-test outcomes.This study found that all the middle school students had positive instrumental attitudes to English learning. However, there were differences between students in the key class and those in the non-key class in their integrative attitudes. The investigation found that students from the key class had more positive attitudes than those from the non-key class. The students from the key class had much higher...