The relationship of attitude-motivation to foreign language learning.

44

The relationship of attitude-motivation to foreign language learning.

NOUAR Yasmina

I.L.V.E; Universlte de Constantine 25000 - Algeria.

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ABSTRACT

This study investigates the relationship between attitude- motivation and the three components of language proficiency : linguistic competence, communicative competence and contextual competence.

The subjects studied were 117 Algerian students learning English at the secondary level.

A relationship was found between integrative motivation, Anxiety in the English Classroom and the three areas of foreign language proficiency.

ATTITUDE-MOTIVATION AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING

Attitude and motivation are two of the most thoroughly examined learner factors. In " Attitude and Motivation in Second Language Learning ", Gardner and Lambert (1972) investigated the attitude-motivation of high school students in three American universities in Maine, Connecticut and Louisiana. In all three studies, it was found that the attitudinal and motivational measures demonstrated meaning ful associations with measures of French achievement. Similar results were obtained by other researchers (Gardner and Smythe 1975a, 1975b, smythe et al.1972).

In general these studies are in agreement showing that measures of achievement in the second language are substantially related to measures of attitude and motivation. Gardner (1966) proposed that a considerable proportion of the variability in second language achievement was related to a particular attitude- motivation configu-ration which he referred to as an integrative motive and described as reflecting a high level of drive on the part of the individual to acquire the language of a valued second language community in order to facilitate communication with that group.

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Studies in attitude-motivation came out with the conclusion that integratively motivated students are more likely to do well in acquiring a second language than are students who have a low integrative motivation, regardless of language aptitude, in situations where intake is available in the Canadian Anglophone situation and in the E.S.L.

situation in the United States. Gardner and Lambert (1959) found that integrative motivation is a better predictor of French proficiency as compared to instrumental motivation. Gardner (1960), in a study conducted in Canada concluded that the integrative motivation was especially important for the "development of communicative skills" (p.215).

It is proposed that in addition to ~ntegrative motivation there is also a type of motivation known as instrumental motivation, which is referred to by Gardner and Lambert (1972) as the more utilitarian value of linguistic achievement, such as getting ahead in one's occupation.

Some authors, such as Krashen (1976), contend that instrumental motivation may take precedence as a predictor of achievement in situations where there is an urgent need to acquire a second language and little desire to integrate. In fact, in a study conducted by Lukmani (1972), it was found that proficiency in English as measured by a cloze test, correlated more with instrumental than integrative motivation (p.<001). Another study conducted by Gardner and Santos (1970) reached a similar conclusion.

In all the studies mentioned above, the results as to which motivation contributes most to success in ianguage learning were an conclusive whereas an integrative motivation appears to be particularly effective in the Canadian bilingal setting, an instrumental motivation was found to be important in setting where the target language is used as an international means or communication.

The hypothesis put forward in this study is that both integrative and instrumental motivation are considered to be useful ways to think about success in second or foreign language learning ; more importantly it is considered that the specific type of orientation can have a

direct impact on particular skill areas of language proficiency Le.instrumental motivation may be involved in promoting linguistic abilities while integrative motivation may be more effective in tasks requiring communicative abilities.

METHOD SUBJECTS

Students learning English as a foreign language (advanced level i.e. Niveau Terminal) at the lycee Ahmed bey in Constantine (Algeria) formed the sample group for this investigation. The total was 117 students 34 males and 83 females who belonged to four different classes (two science stream and two Arts stream). These students (aged 16-20) were assumed to constitute a representative sample of students at the secondary level in Algeria.

Moreover, since these students have all been learning English for five years and they are all fluent speakers of dialectal Arabic, they represent a fairly homogeneous sample.

INSTRUMENTS AND PROCEDURE

DESCRIPTION OF INDEPENDENT AND DEPENDENT VARIABLES.

INDEPENDENT VARIABLES

Attitude and motivation are the independent variables used in this study. A total of 7 variables ali adapted from the subset by Clement et al. (1976) were used. These are : lntegrativeness, Parental Encouragement, Motivational Intensity, English Class Anxiety, interest in Foreign language learning and attitude towards English People.

Procedure

The testing session for each group lasted one hour. In order to facilitate otherwise quite laborious computations

47

and to prevent the risk of errors the two groups, Science students and Arts students were further subdived into four groups. Two were randomly chosen and were administered the subcomoonents of the attitude- motivation scale. ·

•

MODERATOR VARIABLES

The moderating factor of "stream" and gender are included for their possible influence on the foreign language learning process.

DEPENDENT VARIABLES

English language proficiency is the dependent variable used in this study. Overall proficiency is analyzed in terms of three components :

- Linguistic competence defined as the foreign language students'developping knowledge of the rules and the structures of the language and their operations in concrete language samples.

- Communicative competence defined as the ability to convey and receive mutually comprehensible messages in the foreign language.

- Contextual competence : language proficiency is defined as the combination of the linguistic and contextual proficiency of the foreign language students. It is the ability of the foreign language learner to comprehend written utterances in connected discourse.

Linguistic competence was assessed by students' performance on a 40 items standardized multiple choice test adapted from the royal Society of Arts Examination Board ( 1 982).

- Communicative competence was assessed by a standardized test adapted from the Association for Recognized English Schools (ARE LS 1982).

The test describes six major skills of speaking ability that are tested in situations encountered in every day life.

contextual competence was assessed by students' performance on a 31 item cloze test, since it has been suggested (oller 1976) that cloze technique is a useful

measure of overall proficiency. In filling in blanks, the testee is required to use, as Hansen and Stanfield (1983)

put

it "the totality of interrelated skills that comprise a language: lexical, grammatical, contextual."

As such, a cloze test provides a good measure of both linguistic and contextual proficiency.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Correlational procedures (Pearson Product-Moment) were obtained between the independent and dependent variables in order to determine the relationship between students' attitude-motivation and the three components of language proficiency.

't' tests were also used in order to compare the means of Science students and Arts students and the means of males and females on motivation. In one instance however, we had to use a Mann whitney U test (footnote!) in order to compare the means of males and females on the measure of integrative motivation.

INTEGRATIVE AND INSTRUMENTAL MOTIVATION

CORRELATIONAL FINDINCS FOR THE LARGE SAMPLE

(TABLE I)

INTEGRATIVE MOTIVATION

The three correlations are all positive and significant at the 05 level :

-integrative motivation and linguistic competence r=0,28 -integrative motivation and communicative competence r=0,27

-integrative motivation and contextual competence r:::=0, ·19 As far as the relationship be'tvv'een instrumental motivation and the are three components of language proficiency are concerned, they are all negative.

,19

-instrumental mot!vation and linguistic competence r=- 0,0i

-instrumental motivation and communication competence r=-0,014

-instrumental motivation and contextual competence r=- 0,24 ·

Considertng this result, we suggest that integrative motivation might be related to better achievement for Science student~.

TABlE I: CORRELATION MATRIX FOR THE WHOLE SAMPLE

VARIABLES LINGUISTIC COMMUNICATIVE

I

^{TEXTUAL 1}

COt.iif'ETENCE COMPETENCE I COMPETENCE'

INTEGRAT!\IE

0.28 JOOt {n= 11 O) 0.27 io, (n=75) 0.19 X (n=93) MOTIVATION

INSTRUMENTAL

- 0.001 (n=110) 0.24 xx (n=94) - 0.14 (n=93) MOT.1\IATION·

CORRELATIONAL FINDINGS FOR SCIENCE STUDENTS AND ARTS STUDENTS (TABLE II).

I

Correlational analyses were once again used in order to determine whether a relationship still exist between motivation and foreign language proficiency when

"Stream¹¹ is included as a moderator variable. The results reveal that for Science students three out of six correlation are positive and significant.

-integrative motivation and linguistic competence r=0,46 -integrative motivation and communication competence r==0,22

-integrative competence and contextual competence r=0,25

For Arts students, there is only one positive and significant result : integrative motivation and contextual competence r=0,31

TABLE II: CORRELATION MATRIX FOR SCIENCE AND ARTS STUDENTS

VARIABLES LINGUISTIC COMMUNICATIVE TEXTUAL

COMPETENCE COMPETENCE COMPETENCE

INTEGRATIVE MOTIVATION

SCIENCE 0.46 xxxx 0.22 X (n=55) 0.10 (n=62)

(n67}

ARTS 0.07(n=43) 0.25 (n=37} 0.31 x(n=30}

INSTRUMENTAL MOTIVATION

SCIENCE 0.25 X (n=66) -0. 19 (n=57) 0.28 x(n~63) ARTS -0.34 xx (n=43) - 0.37 X (n=37) 0.007 (n,,,30)

xp <.05

xxp < .01

xxxp < .005 xxxxp < .0005

TABLE Ill: COREl.ATION MATRIX (SUBCOMPONENTS OF ATTITUDE/MOTIVATION

SCALE. ARTS AND SCIENCE STUDENTS)

~-- ----,----· --· ···---·--· ·-· - - -,--.,~---· -

VARIABLES ' LINGUISTIC COMMUNICAT11iE CONTi'XTUAL

COMPETENCE i COMPETENCE COMPETENCE

I

^·-·

ANXIETY IN I

THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM

I ^{ARTS -0.31. (n=20) -0.003 (n=17)} .. 0.007 (n= 12i i ^SCIENCE - 0.62 xx (n=20) -0.56 xx (n=20) -· 0.63 xx (n=18)

INTEREST IN FOREIGN LANGUAGES

ARTS 0.39. (n=20) 0.13. (n~17) 0.64 x(n=12)

SCIENCE - 0.16. (n=23) 0.16. (n=20) 0.13 (n=18) PARENTAL

ENCOURAGE- MENT

ARTS 0.18 (n=20) -0.39 (n=17) 0.08 ('1,-12)

SCIENCES -0.23 (n=23) 0.37. (n=20) -0.03 (n=18\

ATTITUDE TOWARDS ENGLISH PEOPLE

ARTS 0.08 (n=20) 0.04 (n=17) (1.09 (r, ~ :71

SCIENCES -0.27. (n=22) 0.35 (n=20) 0.44 {n 1s:i

MOTIVATION INTENSITY

ARTS

I

0.22. (n=20) 0.44. (n,,17) O.C? (n-12) SCIENCES 0.22. (ri=22) 0.20. (n=20) 0.20 (r,· liiJ

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ATTITUDE-MOTIVATION SCALE (TABLE Ill).

Science students and Arts students were further subdivided into two smaller groups who were administered the attitude-motivation scale.

the result of the correlational analyses were disappointing in the sense that we did not find any interesting pattern to be able to make comparisons across groups. However, it was found that "Anxiety in the English Classroom" is related negatively to the three measures of language proficiency.

The correlations were all significant at the level for Science students which means that the more these students felt anxious in the English classroom, the lower their scores in English.

"t" TESTS COMPARING THE MEANS OF

SCINECE STUDENTS AND ARTS STUDENTS ON THE MEASURE OF MOTIVATION (TABLE IV) MALES AND FEMALES (TABLE V).

The findings show that there is a statistically significant result. on the measure of integrative motivation (t=2,29p:<

05) with Science students being more integratively motivated than Arts students.

Because of the importance of English in their curriculum, it was expected that Arts students would be more integratively motivated than their counterparts. The only suggestion we can make to explain this result is that for Science students French is the main language of instruction and this would have helped these students to develop an open mind towards western culture and western languages. Howver, when a Mann whitney U test was run to compare the means of males and females in both streams (science stream U = 28,05) and Arts stream U = 13,05, it was found that females, in both groups, were more integratively motivated than rnaies. This result is in line with reports on sex differences in attitude-motivation (Muchnick and Wolfe 1982, burstall 1975). In these two studies it was found that females had a more positive attitude towards languages in general-however the fact 52

VARIABLES INSTRUMENTAL MOTIVATION ARTS SCIENCE

INTEGRATIVE MOTIVATION

ARTS SCIENCE

TABLE IV. 't' Test between Science and Arts students on Instrumental and integrative.

N° OF CASES ·-M&\N

I

S.D EVALUE p

I

43 18.30

5.69

1.57 >.05

69 17.62 616

I

'

43 22.09 ,J.79

1.30 >.05 68 2+.05 4."19

T.VALUE D.F

-1.07 110

-2.29 109

p

>.05

<.05

j

I:'<") ill'!

q:1

~

VARIABLES I INSTRUMENTAL MOTIVATION

MALES

FEMALES I

TABLE V 't' Test between males and females ou in,;trurnental motiva!ion.

N°OFCASES I MEAN I S.D i F.VALUE p ^I

I

I

ⁱ

I

31 18.58 5.23

T.VALU~

i !

I

I

^{I I 1.35 I ::-.05 I -0.58 i}

76 17.85

I ⁶¹⁰

D.FI p

105\ >.05

that females reprnsent 75 tYo of the ::;tudents in Arts strearn

~nd only 59 ~,b of the students !n the l\rts stream would still not explaine, because of lack statistical evidence,

vvh,-

students in the Science field are more integrativeiy motivated than Arts students.

When we look at the correlations between integrative motivation, instrumental motivation and !anguage proficiency, we notice triat integrative motivation is better related to success for this samplt? of students than instrumental motivation. In other words, the more students identified themselves ·with English people and their culture, the better their English language scores. moreover, when a 't' test was run on motivation scores, integrative motivation was found to rank significantly higher than

instrumental motivation

(t = 6,41 p.< 05).

THE CENTRAL HYPOTHESIS :

The central hypothesis in this study was that characteristics associated with integrative motivation and those associated with instrumental motivation would enhance achievement in a foreign language depending on the language task called forth : linguistic or communicative. The result shows that for this sample of students, integrative motivation as opposed to instrumental motivation, is better related to performance in a formal advarn;ed English language course.

One of the predictions was that integrative motivation would explain achievement in communicative competence and instrumental motivation would explain achievement in linguistic and contextoal competence.

This differenciation failed to occur since integrative motivation was felated to ad1ievement on all the language tasks. It might be because the motivation of integrative!y motivated students is more intense than that of the nonintegrative!y motivated students. (Gardner et ai. 1976).

Probably, as it has been suggested, integratively motivated students spend more time studying the language and also more time in using tile language to act1ieve a higher level of proficiHncy. This integrative

55,

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intern;;y would be reflected in the amount of work students

c o

^{at home and aiso in active} participation in tile c :assroom (Gardner et al. 1976). It might also be the case

t

1at Algeria being a mu!tlingual and multicultural country, foreign languages and foreign cultures are highly valued.

Gardner (1985) claims that the particular cu!turai context rnay influence the learning of anott1er language. He points out "the beliefs in the community concerning the importance and meaning-fuiness of learning the language ... Wil! influence second language acquisition"

(146). \/./ith regard to instrumental motivation and its relationship to language proficiency, the author hesitates to draw any conclusion because of inconclusive results. In fact, although none of the predictions made were confirmed for the large group, ¥/hen stream was included as a moderator variable, instrumental motivation was found to be related to at least one language task.

lnstrnmenta! motivation correlated positively with linguistic competence r=0,25 for Science~ students.

CONCLUSION:

integrative motivation was found to correlate positively with the three components of language proficiency : 11nguistic competence, communicative competence and contextual competence. If the Algerian students are to

!earn better English and if the aim is to have integratively motivated learners, then the importance of integrative rnotivation should be emphasized. Teaching English should not only be linguistic but also cultural. Teachers should conduct a wide variety of informal activities outside the classroom eg. playing English music, acting scenes from English plays. Material selection should emphasize

English culture and history.

Another variable, "Anxiety in the English classroom" was found to be negatively related to achievement, i.e. the more students felt anxious in the English class, tt1e lower il:eir scores in Enalish.

By creating a rriore relaxed atmosphere in the classroom, by r1aving a less authoritative attitude towards their students, teache:s of English will probably succeed in lowering the !eve, of anxiety in tl1eir classes.

Footnote I : using a 't' test in this instance would have violated certain assumptions behind the , ise of

't'

test

(obvious difference in the variance of

thia

two groups}.

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BURSTALL, C.1975 "FRENCH in the primary school : The British experiment". Canadian Modern language Review.

Vol 3·! .388--402. CLEMENT, R sr\/1YTHE, P.G.& GARDNER, R.C.1976.

"Echeiles d'attitudes et de motivation reilees

a

l'apprentissage de l'anglais, iangue seconde". Canadian Modern language Review. VoL 33 5-26.

GARDNER, RC 1985 The role of attitude motivation.

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GARDNER, R.C. & I.AMBERT, W.C. 1959 "Motivational variables in second language Leaming". Canadian journal of Psychology 13.266.272 of GAHDNEH, R.C. & SANTOS, EH, 1970 ''Motiva11ona! variables in Second language Acquisition : /:. Philippine lnvestiga1ion". Research Bulletin :

149 Dept. of Psychology. University of western Ontario.

GARDNER, R. C.& SMYTHE, P. C 1975a " Second Language Acquisition : A Socia! Psychological approach" . Research Bulletin n : 332 Dept. of Psychology. University of Western Ontario.

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Newbury House.

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57

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!_I;;<', I it,,~ , •:.,:>,), l.i . I . "· , ~;; ·- ,

LUKMANl,Y. 1972 "Motivation to learn and language Pro'i':clencyn Language Learning." 22.261--273,

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