Students’ Attitudes and English Language Performance in Secondary Schools in Tanzania

Abstract

The study explored the role of attitudes in secondary school students’ performance in the English language. It explored how learning English was silhouetted by students’ interests and utilitarian attitudes to the language. The fieldwork covered six secondary schools in Morogoro Urban and Mvomero districts in Morogoro Region. Respondents were students and their teachers of English. Data were collected through questionnaire and an achievement test. It was found that students differed in terms of their mastery of English, scoring higher in the structure section, while composition was the most poorly scored section. In all, students, in both Form One and Form Four, had strong and positive attitudes to English. Specifically, while Form One students had more positive interest attitudes than their counterparts, Form Four students displayed more utilitarian attitudes to learning English, compared to Form One students. Students’ positive attitudes are in line with the current Government policy on the language of instruction in secondary schools. The paper ends by emphasising that students’ positive attitudes to English can be exploited to enhance the learning of the language.