Attitudes, Motivation And Anxiety Of Young EFL Learners

ABSTRACT: The researcher conducted her study in the very east part of Cyprus, Dipkarpaz. The study was conducted with fifty nine primary school children and one hundred and three secondary school students in order to find out Dipkarpaz Primary School and Dipkarpaz Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Secondary School students’ attitudes towards learning English, their motivational levels, their motivational orientations and their anxiety levels in learning English. This study also examined the involvement of parents in their children’s English language learning process. The adapted version of the original International Attitude/Motivation Test Battery by R. C. Gardner (2004) and adapted version of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) by Horwitz et al. (1986) were used as instruments in this study. In addition to the adapted versions of the two questionnaires, four open-ended questions and seven interview questions were written by the researcher. The interview was done with twelve students from Dipkarpaz Primary School and twelve students from Dipkarpaz Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Secondary School in order to enrich the results. Face to face interviews were audio-taped and then transcribed and translated into English by the researcher. The data of the questionnaire was analyzed by using SPSS 15. And, keywords were selected and categorized by the researcher by examining open-ended questions and interview results. The questionnaire, interview and open-ended question results revealed that students’ attitudes towards learning English, towards the English language learning context are positive and they have high levels of motivation in learning English which is crucial. In terms of motivational orientation, both the primary school students and secondary school students are both instrumentally and integratively motivated in learning English. Besides these, both of the schools’ students have moderate level of anxiety. In addition, in terms of anxiety level, there wasn’t any significant difference between the two schools as their mean scores are relatively same. Keywords: attitude, motivation, anxiety, primary school, secondary school, foreign language learning. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………