Chilean 12th graders’ Attitudes towards English as a Foreign Language

Abstract

This article aims to provide the results of a research focusing on 12 th graders’ attitudes towards English as a Foreign Language in two secondary schools in Puerto Montt, Chile. Attitude towards a language has been considered as an important factor that influences the process of learning a foreign language (Shams, 2008); for this reason, it is fundamental to identify students’ attitudes since positive attitudes towards English allow the students to have favourable orientation towards learning it (Karahan, 2007). Under this premise, this study corresponds to a case study that includes a quantitative method of data analysis. A survey of five dimensions was conducted amongst 154 students in order to measure their attitudes towards the target language. The results show that their attitudes towards English as a foreign language are favourable; however, the dimensions related to learning English, and English as a subject at school obtained unfavourable attitudes.