Students’ Attitudes and English Language Performance in Secondary Schools in Tanzania
Keywords:
Students’ language attitudes; English language learning; performance; secondary school; TanzaniaAbstract
The study explored the role of attitudes in secondary school
students’ performance in the English language. It explored how learning
English was silhouetted by students’ interests and utilitarian attitudes to
the language. The fieldwork covered six secondary schools in Morogoro
Urban and Mvomero districts in Morogoro Region. Respondents were
students and their teachers of English. Data were collected through
questionnaire and an achievement test. It was found that students
differed in terms of their mastery of English, scoring higher in the
structure section, while composition was the most poorly scored section.
In all, students, in both Form One and Form Four, had strong and
positive attitudes to English. Specifically, while Form One students had
more positive interest attitudes than their counterparts, Form Four
students displayed more utilitarian attitudes to learning English,
compared to Form One students. Students’ positive attitudes are in line
with the current Government policy on the language of instruction in
secondary schools. The paper ends by emphasising that students’
positive attitudes to English can be exploited to enhance the learning of
the language.
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