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Attitudes and Achievements in the First Year of German Language Instruction in Dutch Secondary Education
Author(s) -
KUHLEMEIER HANS,
BERGH HUUB,
MELSE LEIJN
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
the modern language journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.486
H-Index - 83
eISSN - 1540-4781
pISSN - 0026-7902
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4781.1996.tb05471.x
Subject(s) - german , foreign language , psychology , mathematics education , subject (documents) , positive attitude , pedagogy , linguistics , social psychology , philosophy , library science , computer science
This article reports a study of the relationship between students' attitudes toward the subject of German, the course material, and the teacher and students' achievements in German as a foreign language. Attitudes and achievements were measured at the beginning and end of the first year of German (i.e., the second year of Dutch secondary school). As expected, students who had a positive attitude rated higher in achievement than those having negative attitudes, both at the beginning and at the end of the school year. Direct (causal) effects of students' attitudes on achievement (and vice versa) could not be established. Students enrolled in a communicative course had a more positive attitude toward their course material than those studying in a grammatically oriented course.