Attitudes and Motivation of Young ESL Learners

Dadyana Dominic Kajan, Dr. Parilah M. Shah

English language is widely used all around the world for the purpose of communication. It has been one of the languages used in Malaysia ever since it was brought into the education through the colonization back in pre-independent days. Due to its prestigious, English language is seen important among the education stakeholders. Various programmes had been implemented to raise the awareness among the students of how essential the language can impact their knowledge. However, there were very limited studies had been implemented in rural primary schools to find out the pupils’ attitude and motivation towards English language learning. Therefore, this paper was aimed to investigate the attitudes and motivation towards learning English of Year 6 pupils. A total of 60 Year 6 pupils from three primary schools in Upper Tinjar Baram had participated in this survey study. An adapted survey questionnaire from Gardner’s Attitude and Motivation Test Battery (AMTB) was used to collect the data. The findings showed that all pupils had positive attitudes and motivation towards English language learning. The outcomes of the study had highlighted the impact of teacher’s roles and parents’ support in pupils’ learning of English.

https://doi.org/10.31871/IJNTR.5.1.13