Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-2019

Keywords

AMTB, affective variables, English proficiency, learning attitude, L2 motivation, social-cognitive approach

Abstract

English has become a key subject of educational systems worldwide. Thus, researchers have centered their attention on psychosocial processes that influence English proficiency in EFL settings. The aim of our study was to investigate the relation between affective variables, motivation and proficiency and assess which attitudinal/motivational domains can better predict English proficiency. Mini AMTB and English Proficiency test were employed to a sample of 354 university students. Our findings showed that students’ achievement was significantly associated with their motivational intensity, their attitude towards learning English and their desire to learn it, as well as with their opinion of English native speakers and their perception of the quality of the English course. Secondly, instrumental orientation, motivational intensity, attitude towards learning English, and students’ perception of the quality of the English course were found to be the predictors of achievement. Thus, creating a culturally enriching in-class environment based on student-centered strategies could impact on pupils’ proficiency more than teachers’ teaching abilities and in-class attitude.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.7160/eriesj.2019.120302

Comments

Copyright (c) 2019 Michaela Cocca, Armando Cocca

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This work was originally published as:

Cocca, M., & Cocca, A. (2019). Affective Variables and Motivation as Predictors of Proficiency in English as a Foreign Language. Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science, 12(3), 75-83. https://doi.org/10.7160/eriesj.2019.120302

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