THE ROLE OF ATTITUDES AND MOTIVATION IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING: CORRELATIONAL AND EXPERIMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS

Abstract

This study investigated the multitrait‐multimethod validity of the Attitude/ Motivation Test Battery and in addition made use of laboratory procedures to examine the role of language aptitude and attitudinal/motivational attributes on the rate of learning French vocabulary. Subjects were 170 volunteers from an introductory psychology course. The results indicated that all but two measures adapted from the Attitude/Motivation Test Battery evidenced acceptable convergent and discriminant validity and that they were largely independent of social desirability. Indices of language aptitude and integrative motivation were independent correlates of indices of French achievement. The effects of language aptitude, integrative motivation, and mode of presentation on the rate of learning 25 French/ English vocabulary pairs were investigated using a paired associate learning paradigm. The results demonstrated that all three factors influenced rate of learning. Subjects high in language aptitude learned faster than those who were low, those high on integrative motivation learned faster than those who were low, and the rate of learning was more rapid under visual/ written conditions as compared with aural/oral ones. Other results indicated that subjects' perceptions of their effort and interest on each trial were influenced by their level of integrative motivation but not by language aptitude, suggesting the different roles these two factors play in second language learning.