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Relationship between students' opinions, background factors and learning outcomes: Finnish 9th graders learning English
Author(s) -
Härmälä Marita,
Leontjev Dmitri,
Kangasvieri Teija
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
international journal of applied linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.712
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1473-4192
pISSN - 0802-6106
DOI - 10.1111/ijal.12172
Subject(s) - psychology , mathematics education , english language , language proficiency , english as a second language
The aim of this article is to explore the relationship between opinions, background factors, and learning outcomes of Finnish 9th graders learning English. Two sets of data were analysed: (a) the students' ( n = 1,219) proficiency obtained from the English tests of national evaluation of learning outcomes and (b) the students' answers to the background questionnaire exploring their opinions about learning English. The data were analysed statistically using structural equation modelling. Two factors were formed: an opinions factor built from the questionnaire items, and a proficiency factor built from the measures of four language subskills. The results revealed that the students' opinions of English predicted their proficiency, which was also predicted by the students' mother tongues (L1s) and future study plans. It also appeared that the opinions of English were more positive for those students who planned to continue in general upper secondary school, which, in turn, resulted in that the opinions in this group predicted their proficiency especially strongly.