Attitudes and motivation of Greek upper secondary school pupils for learning English as a foreign language

• Main Author: Nikolaou, Alexander
• Published: University of Birmingham 2004
• Subjects: 370.9
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.540090

The purpose of this study was to investigate attitudes and motivation for learning English as a foreign language in Greek upper secondary schools (Lykeia) following Gardner’s socio-educational model. Attitudes, as operationalised in the socio-educational model, can be broken down into attitudes to learning foreign languages, attitudes to the language under investigation (English in this case), attitudes to the learning situation (the FL lesson and teacher), and attitudes to the target language community (The British and Americans in the context of this study). The major research question is how attitudes, orientations, ideological attributes of the target language communities, motivation and achievement are related. The thesis sets out as its working hypothesis that attitudes and motivation are relevant to EFL learning and are major contributors to achievement. The present research was carried out in 3 state and 3 private Lykeia in Athens. A questionnaire was developed that was to a large extent adapted from Gardner and Lambert (1972) and Gardner (1985), but also incorporated elements from other survey instruments. Before launching the main study, the questionnaire was piloted and the necessary modifications were made. My findings indicate that to a large extent the socio-educational model is relevant to the present context of research, although the contribution of attitudes towards the target language communities and the ideologies they represent to motivation do not seem to be as important as was initially hypothesised. The study concludes with recommendations based on the findings and suggestions for further research.