Attitudes of students towards learning English as a foreign language: study of an example from southern Spain

This study examines the attitudes towards learning English as a foreign language and whether those attitudes are moderated by gender, average grade in English, private tutoring, social class, and grade they started to study English. Participants were 177 Compulsory Secondary Education Students in four schools in the South of Spain. The measures used to assess attitudes were modeled after previous questionnaires by Gardner (1985). Jakobobitz ( 1970), and Madrid (1999). Results show that the attitudes, of this sample towards English are slightly positive. No important correlations were found between attitudes and independent variables. One possible explanation is Suggested: students in the autonomous communities of Andalusia and Murcia learn English in academic settings without regularly interacting with the target language community.