A STUDY OF STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING AND THEIR PROFICIENCY AT ELEMENTARY LEVEL

Abstract

It is not possible to deny the importance of the English language as there is no field of life where it has no influence. This is the reason that the educational institutes have given it due consideration regarding academics and it is being taught as a compulsory subject as well as the secondary language in most of the countries across the globe including Pakistan. However, even being focused on exceptionally, the students are unable to show the desired performance regarding learning English. There may be many factors behind such a problem. However, this study focused on the students’ attitudes and their effect on language proficiency. At first, there were 7 (50%) schools selected out of the total 14 schools. Then the data was collected from the 360 students (200 boys & 160 girls) of the selected schools including boys’ and girls’ schools. The data for English learning attitude has been collected with the help of a self-developed instrument “Students’ Attitude towars English Scale (SAES)” consisting of 30 items ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree (five point Likert’s rating scale). On the other hand, the students’ language proficiency has been measured on a test “English Language Proficiency Test (ELPT)” developed by the researcher(s). The results revealed that there was a significant effect of English language learning attitude found on students’ language proficiency.