ETHNIC ATTITUDES AND THE ACQUISITION OF SPANISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE1

Abstract

A cloze test of Spanish proficiency and a questionnaire dealing with linguistic and general ethnic attitudes were administered to 116 students in their third semester of Spanish at the University of New Mexico. Although the study was relatively unsuccessful in predicting second‐language proficiency from attitudinal data, there was sufficient evidence to suggest that a positive orientation toward the local Chicano community was not a prerequisite for the successful acquisition of Spanish. The factorial structure of the linguistic and ethnic attitudes was also examined and comparable clusters of motivational, general attitudinal, and commitment items were obtained for the Anglo and Spanish‐background students in the sample.