Date of Award

2008

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Education

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate Indiana State University's Foreign Language program for Spanish 102 regarding attitudinal and motivational factors that influence student's changes of attitude toward different aspects of the Hispanic culture. This program requires students to take a foreign-language course for two semesters in order to meet overall graduation requirements. This research was based on Dr. Robert C. Gardner's (1985a, 2005) Attitude and Motivation Investigations theory. It used the Attitude/Motivational Test Battery (AMTB) instrument developed by Gardner (2004) to measure factors on Attitude and Motivation. These 5 factors were as follows: (1) Attitude toward the learning situation, (2) Integrativeness, (3) Motivation, (4) Instrumental orientation, and (5) Integrative orientation. The instrument was administered to 97 Indiana State University Spanish 102 students enrolled in the spring of 2008 semester. The instrument responses for the sixth day of class (pretest) were compared to the responses for the last day of class (posttest) for the same students to measure a change among these factors. Final examination grade scores were used to study the degree of foreign language and culture proficiency associated with attitudinal and motivational factors in attitude change towards the learning of Hispanic language and culture. Correlation analysis was conducted to identify the relationship between final exam scores and each one of the pretest and posttest scores of the 5 attitudinal and motivational factors. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to evaluate how pretest factors 1-to-5 scores predict the final examination scores and how posttest factors 1-to-5 scores predict final examination scores. Finally, a MANOVA across all five factors was conducted to find a significant difference among age, sex and the 5 attitudinal and motivational factors that significantly influence the change of attitude towards the learning of Spanish language and culture. The results revealed that the degree of attitude and motivation towards the different aspects of the Hispanic language and culture of students did not have a significant change during the examined semester. Moderate and weak positive correlations were found between pretest and posttest four factors and final exam scores. No significant correlation was found between Instrumental orientation factor and final scores for either pretest or posttest. None of the pretest or posttest factors was found to be significant predictor of final exam scores. The Motivation factor for pretest was found to be the only significant factor among all factors. The results revealed significant main effects for gender. No significant main effect for age was observed. Interaction between gender and age was statistically significant when combined with all factors together. There was a significant effect of gender for pretest and posttest factor 5— Integrative orientation , but no significant effect on gender or age for the remaining four factors. In examining the interaction between gender and age for each one of the five factors, no significant interaction was observed.

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