Attitudes and Attained Proficiency in Efl: A Sociolinguistic Study of Adult Japanese Speakers

Measures intended to assess attitudes of Japanese students of EFL toward themselves, toward other Japanese, toward English speakers, toward travel to an English speaking country, and finally toward learning English, are studied in relation to attained EFL proficiency. The measures used to assess attitudes and motivations were modelled after previous questionnaires by Gardner, Lambert, Spolsky, and others. Results show weak correlations between factors distilled from the attitude measures and attained EFL proficiency. In some cases where positive correlations are expected, negative or insignificant correlations are observed. Two possible explanations are suggested: first, as Gardner has surmised, the relationship between attitudes and the attainment of proficiency in a target language may be quite indirect and therefore weak. However, this suggestion cannot explain the unpredicted positive and negative correlations. A second alternative is to question the validity of the attitude measures. If this is done the results and conclusions of many previous studies are drawn into question.