A longitudinal study of attitudes and motivation in learning English among Japanese seventh-grade students

Abstract

This research examined longitudinally over one year attitudinal and motivational changes of 296 Japanese 7th-grade students learning English. Levels of student's interest and emotion, study habits, perceived utility of English and familiarity with English-speaking people, as well as degree of parental encouragement, and self-rated attainment all decreased from the beginning of the school year until the third or seventh month, being followed by a stabilizing trend after those periods. Student's goals became realistic after the learning for one year. Students with initially high English ability performed better and showed more positive attitudes and motivation than those with initially low ability, whereas the former were suggested to be more vulnerable to the junior high school environment than the latter. Girls had higher scores than boys in most attitudinal and motivational variables, although girls had a lower expectancy of their own performance than boys in the goal-setting area. Instrumental and integrative types of motivation in learning English were not differentiated in the students' perceptions at the beginning of their English education in the seventh grade.