Investigating EFL Learners’ Attitudes Towards English

Abstract

This study aims at investigating secondary school pupils’ and teachers’ attitudes towards writing in English. The subjects of the study were 151 pupils and 30 teachers from different schools. Some of the study objectives are that this research attempts to shed lights on the importance of attitudes of EFL pupils towards writing in English. It also investigates the difficulties and problems of teaching writing in secondary schools and whether writing activities which provided in the English syllabus in secondary level are not adequate enough to develop writing. The research adopted the descriptive analytical method in order to investigate their attitudes towards writing in English, four instruments were used for data collection. A questionnaire for the teachers, another one for the pupils, textbook analysis and classroom observations. The main findings of the study show that the pupils’ attitude towards writing is negatively affected by the way through which the writing materials within the SPINE series are selected, graded and designed. Based on these results, the study recommends that there is a need for further refining of the writing activities in SPINE and incorporation of authentic materials, particularly, materials for developing, selecting and grading the contents of writing materials. Also, SPINE series should be carefully designed by different specialist such as psychologists, language specialists and educationalists.