The Impact of Attitude Towards Mandarin as A Foreign Language Achievement

Abstract

Attitude plays a fundamental role in the learning process of foreign languages. It has recently gotten much attention from first and second-language researchers. Previous studies have indicated that learners showed a positive attitude towards learning Mandarin. Limited studies investigated the correlations between language learning attitude and course achievement among Mandarin foreign language learners. Therefore, this study tends to fill this gap. 614 non-native Malay learners of Mandarin from 5 different public universities in Malaysian participated in this study. The study used a quantitative design, and data was collected through questionnaires and the end-of-semester course grade. Descriptive statistics analysis, correlation and linear regression using SPSS. 25 were run to analyse the collected data. This study revealed a statistically positive correlation between attitude and Mandarin foreign language course achievement. The linear regression result revealed that learning attitude statistically predicted Mandarin foreign language learners' course achievement (β = .20, .001). This study has concluded limitations and recommendations to help institutions and interested researchers shed light on these further research studies.