Attitudes toward English: A study of first-year students at King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok

This paper addresses the issues of the students’ attitudes toward the users and uses of English at King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok in Thailand. The participants were 550 non-English major first-year students from six different faculties. The students were required to study English in a foreign language learning environment where there is little immediate need to use English for real communication. The students’ attitudes regarding the users of English and the uses of English in five different contexts were investigated: the personal, recreational, educational, professional, and international. A questionnaire, assessing attitudes in terms of three attitudinal components—affective, behavioral, and cognitive components—and semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data. The collected data were analyzed using percentage, mean, standard deviation, ANOVA, and correlation coefficient. The findings revealed that the students from all six faculties had overall positive attitudes toward English, with the agro-industry students showing the highest mean score regarding English language users, while the industrial technology and management students showed the lowest mean scores in four contexts of language use; namely, recreational, educational, professional, and international. Moreover, the results indicated that most items rated as highly positive belonged to the cognitive component, while those rated as negative mostly came from the affective component. This paper also discusses some of the correlations among the six attitudinal aspects and pedagogical implications.