Prospective ELT Teachers Attitudes Toward The English Language In An EFL Context

Abstract

Attitudes toward a foreign language and the motivation to learn a language have been of interest to many educators and researchers. However, the majority of research has been conducted with language learners. There is a lack of literature concerning the attitudes of teachers and teacher trainees toward the language they are or will be teaching. Thus, the current study aims to investigate English Language Teaching (ELT) teacher trainees attitudes toward the English language and their self-reported difficulties when using their foreign language skills in daily and academic language. Two hundred teacher trainees participated in the study. The questionnaire, which was developed via an extensive literature review and adaptations of Karahans (2007) and Al Zahranis (2008) studies, was found reliable (Conbachs alpha, .876). The study showed that trainees have mildly positive attitudes toward the English language, with females being more positive than males. The findings also suggest that trainees have stronger instrumental motivation than integrative motivation. Moreover, the results indicate that trainees do not differ significantly in terms of their difficulties in using daily language skills. However, there are some statistically significant differences in academic language, such as vocabulary and monologue speech. In addition, there are statistically significant differences between males and females in speaking and reading comprehension for daily language, as well as reading comprehension for academic language.