POSITIVE ATTITUDES AND REALISTIC BELIEFS - LINKS TO PROFICIENCY

Middle-school-aged students in 12 classes of a 9-week Foreign Language Exploratory (FLEX) program participated in a study attempting to maintain and/or to improve students' attitudes toward French and Spanish speakers, replicating an earlier study (Mantle-Bromley & Miller, 1991) of first-year Spanish students. Students in the treatment group participated in culture-related lessons that used attitude-change theory in their design. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) procedures showed that the experimental group's mean score on a modified version of the Attitudes and Motivation Test Battery (AMTB) (Gardner, Smythe, & Clement, 1974) was significantly greater than that of students in the control group (p < .05). In addition, using the Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) (Horwitz, 1988), the study measured, in an exploratory fashion, students' beliefs about the language learning process. Results demonstrated that many young students enter their first language class with misconceptions about language learning that may hinder their progress and persistence in language study.