A study of non-English majoring students' proactivity toward English language acquisition at Ho Chi Minh City University of Food Industry

Abstract

Learners' ability and attitude are usually the most important determinants of language acquisition success. If students have passive initiatives in thinking and acting, it might have negative consequences. The study's goals are to investigate students' proactivity in learning English, discover the disparities in factors faced by three specializations, and draw some teaching implications at Ho Chi Minh City University of Food Industry (HUFI). This study used qualitative descriptive research of 108 non-English-majored students from Business Administration, Food Technology, and Mechanical Engineering who attended a fifteen-week English 1 course. The survey of three questions with twelve items covers behavioral, cognitive, and emotional aspects of language attitudes. The findings reveal that students generally have an average proactive attitude toward English. On the other hand, the three majors are very different in terms of gender and attitudes toward English. Mechanical students had a little less proactive attitude than students in the other two specializations.