research

Saudi female students' motivational orientations towards learning English

Introduction

1.1. Overview

English is the most popular foreign language studied in most Arab countries. In Saudi Arabia, English is the only foreign language taught in the country. it is very important as a lot of new fields of work now need using the internet and using language so it is very strange from students in Saudi Arabia to have low interest in learning English. Although English is taught in all schools and universities there, there is an obvious Saudi female students motivational orientation towards learning English.

English is taught in all government and private non-government schools as a foreign language. It has a strong presence in the Saudi educational system due to many considerations including what I have said about the importance of English in work and communication but the students does not give it a strong interest.

The lack of efficiency between students for many reasons. I am going to discuss in details in my research including their purposes of learning it as most of them learn it only for passing tests and having certificates. They including also the lack of using English outside class and there are many other reasons relating to the educational material, the teachers and the ways of teaching.

For all what I said before women's attitudes towards learning English should have more emphasis. I have searched for any researches relating to that, but I do not find many researches and they are only relating to men's learning not women's. There aren’t any researches conducted to investigate that.

The purpose of this research is to discuss and investigate the Saudi Arabian women's attitudes in details as we can not fix any problem without having a lot of information relating to its reasons.

!.2. Statement of the problem

This research aims at giving attention to the reasons for having low efficiency of English among Saudi Arabian women

1.3. Purpose of the research

The purpose of this study is to investigate Saudi female students' motivational orientations towards learning English.

Research questions

Do the students in Saudi Arabia have interest in learning English?

To what extent they are not interested in learning English?

What are the reasons for that?

Are the educational system is good and suitable?

Are they are encouraged to use English?

Research hypothesis

This research proposes that women would have more interest in learning English and in becoming efficient in it.

Research significance:

This work aims at giving more attention to a great problem relating to improving the efficiency in women's attitudes towards learning. I want the topic to be more and more discussed for getting practical solutions based on dealing in a good way with the reasons for the negative attitudes.  

Definition of the Terms

Motivation; when the learner has a desire or a need to learn more, this consequently leads to the fact that all the powers that the learners has turns to help the learning of the second language; which is English. Motivation in this study is the total of the student's scores in the four subscales of motivation, which are: a) why he/she learns English; b) his/her desire to learn English; c) motivational intensity to learn English; and d) his/her attitudes toward learning English.

Motivational Intensity: The motivational intensity in this study is defined as the effort that is done by the learner to achieve the task of learning English inside and outside the classroom. It is the sum of each student's scores on the intensity subscale.

Attitudes toward Learning English: Attitudes toward learning English in this study is defined as the student's general feelings that he likes or dislikes toward the task of learning English, toward the presence of English as a subject in the university of Taibah curriculum and their general evaluation of the value of learning English. Attitudes are the sum of each student's scores on this subscale

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Jordan reported that attitudes toward learning French in some British schools had a positive relationship to students' achievement. He also noticed that attitudes were more favorable during the first year, and declined afterward. Jones (1949) constructed an attitude scale for estimating the attitude of children toward learning Welsh as a second language in some British schools. The results of Jones' study were consistent with those of Jordan. He found significant positive relationships between attitude toward Welsh as a second language and final achievement in Welsh, and that attitude was most favorable during the first year and declined afterward. The study showed that students coming from Welsh-speaking backgrounds revealed more favorable attitudes toward Welsh than those from non-Welsh speaking homes.

In another study, Anisfield and Lambert (1961) administered achievement, general intelligence, language aptitude and attitude measures to Jewish 8th and 9th graders learning Hebrew in Montreal, Canada. The results of this study showed that integrative motivation did not correlate with achievement. Instead, it showed that instrumental motivation related to achievement in Hebrew as a second language.

Gardner, et al (1976), confirmed the importance of integrative motivation in grades 7-11 in French classes in Montreal. It was found that measures of integrative motivation tend to correlate more with the students' abilities to communicate than with their grades.

Spolsky (1969) conducted a study on the motivational/ attitudinal aspects Of second language learning using foreign students in the United States as subjects. When Spolsky used a direct questionnaire, such as those used by Gardner, to measure integrative motivation, he did not find a significant relationship between integrative motivation and proficiency in English. He found only 20% of his sample identified with the American way of living, and this was considered by Spolsky as a desire for integration on the part of those 20% of the sample.

In his attempt to prove that integrative motivation is superior to instrumental motivation, Spolsky used an indirect identity scale to measure integrative motivation in his study, but also did not find a significant relationship between proficiency and integrative motivation as measured by the indirect scale. Spolsky blamed that on the students' unwillingness to admit to motives which suggested that they wished to leave their own countries permanently.

Oiler, Baca and Vigil (1977) surveyed 60 Mexican-American females in New Mexico and found that the subjects who were proficient in English indicated that they were not interactively motivated, rather they indicated that they learned English for instrumental reasons. Oiler, et al, blamed these results on political ill feelings of Mexicans toward Americans.

Backman (1976) conducted a study in which he elicited the attitudes and motivation of Venezuelan students learning English at Boston University. The results of this study did not indicate any statistically significant correlation between positive attitude or strong integrative orientation and progress in second language learning over a three or six month period.

Abbashar (1977) conducted an attitudinal/motivational study using Arab graduate and undergraduate students learning English at Indiana University as subjects and using TOEFL and attitudinal scales which were adopted from Gardner and Lambert as data collecting instruments.

Hansen (1981) conducted an attitudinal/motivational study using 93 international students learning English in three different English programs in New Jersey at the university level. The results of this study showed that both students' attitudes toward their own culture as well as their attitudes toward the second language community related to achievement. The study also showed that neither "type" of motivation, integrative or instrumental, related to achievement in English.

Wong (1982) conducted a study on the role of attitude and motivation in second language acquisition using native-born and foreign-born Chinese Americans who learned English as a second language at the high school level in San Francisco. The results of this study indicated that there was no significant difference between the instrumentally motivated and the interactively motivated students. The descriptive data, however, showed that the majority of the students were instrumentally motivated, and that the native-born students were more often instrumentally motivated than the foreign-born Chinese.

Mulla (1979) found that instrumental motivation related to learning English as a foreign language among 80 Saudi Arabian high school students. It has also been found that integrative/instrumental differentiation did not hold in the context of Saudi Arabia.

In a study of college students learning English in Spain, Aguirre-Carrasco (1973) found that students scored high on both instrumental and integrative motivation in relation to achievement. He attributed the differences in his results from those of Gardner and Lambert to the differences of the study setting.

In an extensive study involving 10 countries in Europe, Asia and South America, Lewis and Massad (1975:297) attempted to find factors which influenced teaching and learning English as a foreign language. It was found that time, classroom practice and student attitude and aspirations were the most positive predictors of success in the learning of English. Subjects in general stressed the instrumental use of English, but older students (pre-university students) emphasized the utilitarian value of English more than younger students (who were in the 14-year-old range). Researchers suggested that younger students had not experienced any real need for the study of English, while older students were either expecting to use English when they entered college, or, expecting to leave school shortly, would possibly use English in their jobs.

After reviewing almost most of the literature review, the researcher finds the following. As no one has studied the motivation of the female Saudi students towards learning English language especially, in Taibah University, the researcher considers it as a gab and she decides to investigate this point in the research.

Overview

In this chapter the researcher describes the methodology used in the study to explain what motivation of Saudi students towards learning English language. This chapter is organized as follows. Section 1 introduces an overview about the research methodology. Section 2 will be about the study population and from where the sample of the study will be drawn. Section 3 will be about the study sample. It will describe the research participants. Section 4 will be about research instrument and finally section 5 will present the materials for the data collection.

Research Methodology

The research will use the qualitative methodology. Applying qualitative methodology in a motivation research is considered a difficult task. This because of three reasons; first, we cannot observe motivation in a direct way because it is abstract. This means that 'motivation' is a mental process. Hence, it is cannot be observed by direct observation, but must be determined in an indirect way through the individual's behaviors or physiological responses. Second, motivation has many dimensions. Finally, motivation is not stable; but it is changing. It changes over time because one grows up and other elements that are around the person. All of these factors help in a great way the motivational changing overtime of the students and make the changing in their motivational level.

This study of the motivation of Saudi female students towards learning English language is based on the quantitative research; It was started by the works of Gardner and Lambert in the late of 1950s and early of 1960s. This research studies the concept of motivation. This method of research considers motivation as something that can be measured, and does not consider it a dynamic and changing. Ushioda (2001) emphasized the need of applying the qualitative research in second language motivation. She argues that motivation in qualitative research is not defined in terms of observable and measurable task, but in terms of the influences and of thinking and belief that shape the students' motivational experiences. Therefore, the applying of a qualitative research in this study is necessary as it considers motivation as dynamic and changes over time.

According to Dörnyei (2001), qualitative research refers to a method of research that involves data collection procedures that are based on textual and non-numerical data, which are analyzed by using non-statistical approaches. Qualitative data usually include recorded spoken data such as interview data which are transcribed to textual form.

Study population

The population from which sample will be drawn is Taibah University students at Asslam campus.

Study Sample

10 Saudi students; all of them are female, will be chosen as the participants; through personal contact they will participate in the study. All of the participants in this study are students at Taibah University students at Asslam campus; English intensive program and/or the graduate and undergraduate programs. The selection process will be made based upon many factors. One factor is that was taken into account was the English proficiency level of the participants. Also, the motivational changes may vary depending on the academic and linguistic level of the student. Another factor in recruiting process was the dialectal variation in relation to the students’ Arabic. Difference could have an influence on the findings of the study. In order to present a good study, the students chosen to participate in this study represented different regions of Saudi Arabia. This will be important to assure the credibility of findings and come up with representative results.

Research instrument

The gathering of data in this study will be based upon two methods; an interview and a questionnaire. Using the two methods of data gathering help the results and provide a strong theoretical framework to the study.

Data collection

A 30-minute interview will be conducted with each of the Saudi students who will participate in the study. The interviews are conducted by the researcher in the subject’s home. Each participant is given a cover letter about the study to read. And an informed consent form indicates that the purpose of the study is to investigate the role of motivation in English language learning and how motivation of learning English for Saudi students changes over time. It also provides a detailed explanation about the audio recording, of the participants’ responses. At the end of the interview, each participant completed a background questionnaire.

Chapter four

In this chapter, the researcher shows the statistical analysis of the data she collected in a form of a questionnaire. First, the the results will be discussed. Second, the researcher is going to explain the results of each item of the questionnaire. Then , results will be presented.

Descriptive Analysis results

The questionnaire was in the form of five point Likert-scale for the first 45 items: five points “strongly agree”, four points for “agree”, three points for “neutral”, two points for “disagree”, and one point for “strongly disagree”, The researcher used SPSS 10 to examine the percentages, the frequencies, and the means of the students’ answers to each item on the questionnaire.

Research question # 1

What the level of motivation is toward English learning among Saudi female students in Taibah University students at Asslam campus. This question was answered by the following subcategories:

Table 1

Desire to learn English subcategory

		strongly agree	agree	Neutral	Strongly disagree	Disagree
1	I wish they would increase the amount of English material we learn in school	6.44	3.04	1.44	1.54	0.70
2	Even if English becomes an optional subject I will take it.	3..08	2.98	1.05	4.09	0.90
3	I am always pleased when English class begins	5.09	5.09	2.18	2.09	3.09
4	I wish they would increase the number of English teaching hours.	3..08	2.98	2.18	5.09	5.25
5	The more I learn English, the more I become interested in it	4.67	2.76	3.89	1.09	1.16
6	I wish they would increase the number of English teaching hours.	1.09	5.08	1.78	3.05	4.17

The most interesting item out of this group is item number 3. Female Students who learn English in Taibah University agree that they are pleased when the English class begins because 5.09 percentages agree on this. 6.44 percentages of female students wish the English materials they have in schools increased because it will help them in their study in the university.

Table 2

b. Attitude toward learning English:

		Strongly agree	agree	neutral	disagree	Strongly disagree
1	Every Saudi student should learn English.	3.92	3.53	1.22	1.42	1.09
2	English is the most interesting subject in University.	3.09	2.36	1.02	1.20	2.87
3	It is too bad that so few Saudis can speak English.	2.87	3.15	1.98	2.64	2.03
4	Learning English deserves the time and effort expended in it.	1.07	2.98	1.83	4.01	2.92
5	English is useful to every student in the future.	1.98	2.09	2.04	1.07	2.9

Most of female students in Taibah University agree that English is the most interesting subject they study. Most of them also disagree that learning English deserves the time and effort expended in it. Also, most of them disagree that English is useful for the students in the future.

Chapter five

Discussion

This chapter introduces summary of the study. The purpose of the study, research questions, method used, and the findings will be discussed briefly. Finally, a discussion of the findings, recommendations of this study is detailed in this chapter.

The main aim of this study was to investigate and examine motivations of female Saudi students at Taibah University in Saudi Arabia, who were studying English. The aim of the study was to discover what the significant changes in motivation are and the attitude the students have when learning English. The study also examined the relation between three affective factors and the participants' achievement in English. In addition, participants were grouped by major and age to see if there were any significant differences in motivation, attitude by age.

The following research questions were addressed in this study:

1. Does the type of English program affect students motivation and attitude about learning English?

2. Is there a significant change on learners' motivation before and after taking courses?

3. Are there differences in learning achievements of English as a foreign?

4. Are there differences in students' attitude and motivation by demographic variables?

In this study, the participants were female university students from Taibah University, Saudi Arabia. The instrumentation used to gather the data was a questionnaire. It tested the participants on five scales: motivation, attitude, anxiety, instrumentality, and integrative motive.

Summary of the Results

The findings of this study can be summarized as follows:

There were no significant changes in motivation, attitude, and anxiety in the period after the test, when the English program was used as the fixed factor. The achievement in English correlated more with the attitude, motivation, and anxiety. Attitude and motivation correlated positively, and anxiety correlated negatively. The students achieved significantly better on English final exams. Attitude, motivation, and anxiety within the same gender did not change significantly from the pre-test time to the post-test.

Discussion of the Results As mentioned above, the main purpose of this study was to measure the effect of motivation towards learning English and the attitude, and anxiety of the L2 learners at Taibah University. Discussion of Research Question 1

Research Question 1 concerned significant changes on learners' motivation, attitude, and anxiety before and after taking courses. As seen from the responses of participants, most of female students had quite high attitude and motivation at the beginning of the experiment. They had big numbers for motivation, anxiety, and attitude, respectively. The affective factors' means and standard deviations for the participants were also quite high. Most participants ended with lower means of motivation and attitude, and higher means of anxiety. There was one significant change found between the times of the pretest and post-test in the attitude of the students which went down. This is not logic because learners have higher attitude when learn what they want. There is a strong correlation between what students study and their level of attitude. Students majoring in English achieve higher on motivation and attitude toward learning language than students from different majors, such as Arabic and science. This unexpected result can be justified by the nature of the curriculum, teacher student relation, and weekly academic load. According to Keller (1983), motivation is the sum of the choices people make about which experiences or goals they approach or avoid, and the degree of effort they will exert in this respect. The university adopted textbooks like English for Medicine and English for Computing and started teaching them to these two majors. The students' numbers went down significantly on attitude toward learning language.

This is an example of the questionnaire used in the study:

Please read each item very carefully and put a check mark ( ) to the left of the choice (A, B, C, or D) that is most applicable to you and best describes your effort:

On the average I spend the following amount of time doing English assignments and preparing for the next English class:

( ) A. Three hours per day

( ) B. Two hours per day

( ) C. One hour per day

( ) D. Less than one hour per day

I try to speak English and I

( ) A. deliberately seek out opportunities to speak it with foreigners.

( ) B. speak English whenever the opportunity presents itself.

( ) C. speak English only when I need to.

( ) D. avoid speaking English to anyone.

During the English class, I

( ) A. pay close attention and actively participate in the class discussion.

( ) B. pay close attention and participate only when called upon by the teacher.

( ) C. have to force myself to keep listening to the teacher.

( ) D. have a tendency to daydream about other things.

When I have an assignment to do in English, I

( ) A. do it immediately when I start my homework.

( ) B. do it after I have finished the rest of my homework.

( ) C. become completely bored, but I do it.

( ) D. try to get away without doing the assignment.

The English material I am learning in school is

( ) A. not sufficient to attain fluency, and I am determined to learn more English in private institutes to attain fluency in English

( ) B. not sufficient to attain fluency and should be increased.

( ) C. sufficient and should be kept as it is.

( ) D. too much and should be reduced.

I do something every day to improve my English, e.g., look up new words and idioms.

( ) A. almost always

( ) B. sometimes

( ) C. rarely

( ) D. never.

I talk in English with my classmates and teacher during English classes.

( ) A. almost always

( ) B. sometimes

( ) C. rarely

( ) D. never.

I listen to English programs on radio and T.V. in order to improve my comprehension of English.

( ) A. almost always

( ) B. sometimes

( ) C. rarely

( ) D. never.

I practice speaking English on my own in order to improve my fluency

. ( ) A. almost always

( ) B. sometimes

( ) C. rarely

( ) D. never

مثال للاستبيان باللغة العربية

الاسم

المدرسة

الصف

الحصة

*هل سبق أ ن درست اللغة الإنجليزي في المرحلة الجامعية؟ نعم( ) لا ( )

*هل هذه السنة الدراسية هي السنة الأولى لك لدراسة اللغة الانجليزية ؟ نعم( ) لا ( )

أختي الطالبة الصفحات التالية من هذا الاستبيان هي عبارة عن كيف تنظر الطالبة السعودية لعمليه تعلم اللغة الإنجليزية بالجامعة فأرجو منك أختي الطالبة أن تقراي آل فقره باهتمام وتحاول أن تقييم أهميتها طبقا لتجربتك ورأيك لتعلم اللغة الإنجليزية آلغة أجنبية بالجامعات علما بان اجاباتك ستكون سرية و لن يطلع عليها احد غيرك

-اقضي الزمن الاتي في حل واجبات اللغة الانجليزية و التحضير للدرس القادم

-ثلاث ساعات

ساعتين

ساعه

اقل من ساعة

-احاول التحدث بالانجليية مع الاجانب

اتعمد البحث عن فرصة للتحدث مع الاجانب

. ( ) ب-أتحدث باللغة الإنجليزية عندما تتوفر الفرصة للحديث دون مجهود مني لإيجاد الفرصة.

ج-أتحدث باللغة الإنجليزية فقط عندما أحتاج حاجة ماسة لذلك . ( )

د-أتجنب الحديث باللغة الإنجليزية مع الآخرين.

Discussion of results

The mean and standard deviation for each of the five components of motivation

Standard deviation	Mean	group	Model's components
2.975 2.935	3.098 9.094	Pre post	Integrative motivation
4.045 4.873	3.543 2,986	Pre post	Motivation component
5.935 5.826	0.234 5.987	Pre post	Parental encouragement
5.123 3.864	9.467 8.087	Pre post	Instrumental motivation

Chapter six

Conclusion

This research explored the attitude, motivation, and anxiety of female students learning English as a foreign language at Taibah University in Saudi Arabia. The University isn't an old one, and both programs are still growing and far from being mature. This research is not a research-development (RD) in nature. It is for that reason the researcher did not present any solution for how to change things or what might need to be revised in order that these two programs help the learners to learn to their utmost and benefit to their fullest capacities. The findings of this research showed that students had higher means on motivation and attitude, and lower means on anxiety, and the programs did not help increase any of this student' affective factors. Participants were found to have significant differences on motivation, attitude, and anxiety when sorted by age. Bigger Females had higher motivation, and attitude, and lower anxiety when compared to smaller ones. The affective factors correlate well with the 80 final grades students measured by the final score they had on English.

Recommendations for Further Research

1. It is recommended that this study be repeated at different universities in Saudi Arabia to create a more comprehensive idea of the roles of attitude, motivation, anxiety, gender, and major in language learning and achievement.

2. It is recommended that evaluative studies be conducted to examine the effectiveness of the currently offered English program at Taibah University.

3. It is recommended that this study be repeated with one change to the methodology to have a better control over teachers and the nature of the final English test. This can be done by conducting the same study with two groups who are taught by the same teacher, and the final English score will be measured by the same standardized test for both groups.

4. It is recommended that the same study be repeated following a mixed methodology instead of being using a quantitative one. The mixed method helps with understanding the real reasons that participants end up with decreased attitudes and higher anxiety.