ATTITUDES TOWARDS LEARNING ENGLISH LANGUAGE AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Attitude is an important language learning variable. It determines the success of the classroom encounters. As a result, the focus of this research was to look into the attitudes of Nigerian college students regarding learning English. The study was, therefore, a quantitative research. It employed an adapted questionnaire (Attitudes towards Language Scale (ATols), a 30-item instrument that was constructed based on (Baker, 1992) tripartite model of language attitude, to collect data from 265 sample of college students who were preservice teachers in Nigeria. The study used random sampling technique to select the respondents from among the 850 students using Krejcie and Morgan sample size determination table. To determine the mean scores of the items on the scale, the data was ran using SPSS (v20). The data revealed that students possessed positive attitudes across all the components of all language learning attitude. That is, the students possessed positive conative, cognitive and affective attitudes. This means that the students exhibited positive behavioural attitudes to the learning of English language in the college believing that learning English language would improve their personality and that acquisition of more knowledge, understanding, and information were achievable through learning English. However, it was established that there were no significant differences in student attitudes on the basis of gender. This study holds that teachers of English need to always consider English language learners' attitudes as this will enhance classrooms success. Appropriate methods and techniques that will further enhance the students' positive attitudes should be employed in English lessons.