Language Attitude among Malaysian Secondary School Students

Abstract

The general population of Malaysia attends 11 years of compulsory learning of the English language in a formal context at both primary and secondary schools. Since the implementation of compulsory learning, the English subject syllabus has been reviewed and revised several times. However, according to the Ministry of Education, English subject achievement among secondary students is one of the poorest in schools with 72 percent of Malaysian students not meeting the minimum requirement for secondary school graduates. This study investigates Malaysian secondary school students' attitudes towards English on three aspects of language attitude which are cognitive, affective and conative. A total of 100 respondents, aged between 17-18 years old took part in this study. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data which were collected via an adapted survey questionnaire. The findings suggest the respondents have moderately positive language attitudes towards English and its learning. The result of this survey may be beneficial to those in the education line specifically in the second/foreign language field. It is suggested that future study should expand the research by identifying and comparing attitudes from students with varying proficiency levels for better insight on the attitude differences based on the achievement levels.