A LONGITUDINAL-STUDY OF ATTITUDES AND MOTIVATION IN LEARNING ENGLISH AMONG JAPANESE 7TH-GRADE STUDENTS

This research examined longitudinally over one year attitudinal and mo tivational changes of 296 Japanese 7th-grade students learning English . Levels of student's interest and emotion, study habits, perceived ut ility of English and familiarity with English-speaking people, as well as degree of parental encouragement, and self-rated attainment all de creased from the beginning of the school year until the third or seven th month, being followed by a stabilizing trend after those periods. S tudent's goals became realistic after the learning for one year. Stude nts with initially high English ability performed better and showed mo re positive attitudes and motivation than those with initially low abi lity, whereas the former were suggested to be more vulnerable to the j unior high school environment than the latter. Girls had higher scores than boys in most attitudinal and motivational variables, although gi rls had a lower expectancy of their own performance than boys in the g oal-setting area. Instrumental and integrative types of motivation in learning English were not differentiated in the students' perceptions at the beginning of their English education in the seventh grade.