The Importance Of Attitude In Foreign Language Learning

Learning a foreign language has always received enough attention from researchers in the field. From mid-nineteenth century, approaches to teaching a foreign language started to develop and continued to the present time. However, teaching a foreign language through an appropriate methodology is one thing, and learners’ feeling towards learning it is another. Attitude is one of the crucial affective factors in learning a second/foreign language. Attitude is “a favorable or unfavorable evaluative reaction toward something or someone, exhibited in one’s beliefs, feelings or intended behavior” (Myers, 2010 as cited in Narváez, Elena, Gómez & Antonio, 2017, p. 23). In learning a second language, attitude is of two different types: attitudes towards

Attitudes towards the language community are relevant to the social aspect and cultural implication of SLA such as attitudes towards ethnocentrism (Gardner, 1982). Regarding the importance of attitude towards learning, Kara (2010) declared that while teachers help learners to acquire the knowledge, skills and values of society, the attitudes of the learners towards learning establish one of the most crucial subjects among the skills and knowledge acquired in education. Gardner believes that these two types of attitudes influence the achievement in second language learning. However, he claims that ‘attitudes towards learning the language are more closely related with achievement than attitudes towards the second language community’ (Darmah, n. d. p. 3). Attitudes influence inner mood, behavior and learning ( İnal , Evin & Saracaloğlu, n.d.). ‘There is an interaction between language learning and the environmental components in which students grew up. Both positive and negative attitudes have a strong impact on the success of language learning’ (İnal, Evin & Saracaloğlu, n.d.,