A study of seventh-grade Saudi students' motivation level to learn English as a foreign language.

摘要

During the first week of the school year 2002-2003, seventh grade students in Onaizah, Saudi Arabia, had their first chance to learn the English language in a formal classroom setting. The purpose of this study was to measure the motivation level of Saudi students to learn English as a foreign language before and after these students were exposed to the English language in a formal classroom learning setting. Then the study addressed changes in the level of motivation after the students had been exposed to English language instruction.; The researcher used Gardner's (1985) socio-educational model of second language learning, modified by Gardner (2001). The instrument used in this study was a questionnaire of 54 items administered in Arabic to 301 seventh-grade students. The researcher used the same questionnaire for both the pretest and posttest, with minor changes in sentences' tenses. In the statistical analysis, the researcher used descriptive analysis, a one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), and a Paired-Sample T&barbelow;-test. The results of the one-way multivariate analysis of variance indicated that there were significant differences between the Saudi students' motivation level before they learned English as a foreign language and after one academic year of language learning. All five components of the model (integrative motivation, parental encouragement, instrumental motivation, attitude toward the learning situation, and motivation) were then tested separately using the Paired-Sample T&barbelow;-test and all confirmed MANOVA results. All of the five dependent means tended to be higher in the pretest. Therefore, the direction of motivation level toward learning English for the seventh-grade Saudi students in Onaizah decreased.