Abstract
Language attitude study has proven to reveal students’ success and failure in learning language. Attitude is not innate, but learned. Students learn to grow and improve their positive language attitudes towards foreign languages through certain programs at schools. The aim of this research is to investigate the language attitude of students in an Indonesian Islamic boarding school towards English as a foreign Language and to describe why they have the attitude. The respondents were 49 students of 2nd grade of senior high school classes from HAC (High-Achieving Class) and LAC (Low-Achieving Class). The design of this research was mixed method using explanatory sequential design. To obtain the data, the instrument used was a questionnaire consisting of cognitive, affective and conative components of language attitudes. Interview was carried out to acquire the reason the students had the attitudes. The finding was both HAC and LAC students’ language attitudes were mostly positive (91.83%) in cognitive, affective and conative language attitudes. Some (8.17%) had different language attitudes. They showed positive language attitudes, but acquired low scores and showed negative language attitudes, but acquired high scores. The interview revealed this phenomenon.
Highlights
Every student has different motivations, attitudes, opinions and beliefs about a particular second or foreign language, such as English, so they are willing to learn the language
The focus of the discussion is on the positive language attitude found due to the small amount of data appearing for negative language attitude (8.17%) and the fact that the previously stated assumption about students with negative language attitude do not have enthusiasm for learning the language, impacting on low language proficiency has been proven through the low English language proficiency with an average value of 5.83 for low-achieving class (LAC) (3 students)
The language attitudes towards english The following is the discussion on the findings of the positive language attitude consisting of the cognitive, affective and conative components in line with the idea that positive language attitude involves three components; it means if a student has a positive attitude, they have those three components positive at the same time [25]
Summary
Every student has different motivations, attitudes, opinions and beliefs about a particular second or foreign language, such as English, so they are willing to learn the language. Students’ attitude has been acknowledged as one of the most important factors that impact on learning English as a foreign language. The understanding of attitude corresponds to the tripartite model of attitude construction of Rosenberg and Hovland [2] defined as affective, behavioral or conative and cognitive. Affective is feelings; emotion and preferences, cognitive is opinions, beliefs and thought, and behavioral or conative is intentions; perceptions or tendency to behave towards certain entity [3, 1]. Positive and negative attitudes explore these three components to decide the tendency of an attitude in learning a foreign language
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