중학생들의 영어 문법학습에 대한 흥미와 자신감

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the interest and self-confidence of middle school students in learning English grammar and to examine the relationship they have with English grammar and speaking skills. For this purpose, 27 middle school students in G city participated in a survey, which is composed of background information questionnaires along with interest and self-confidence in learning English grammar. The study also assessed the participants’ grammatical knowledge and oral proficiency. In addition, two students were selected from each proficiency group (top-level, middle-level, and low-level) to attend an in-depth interview. The survey results showed that the students’ interest and self-confidence in learning English grammar were not high, which is mainly due to frequent exams and being required to memorize large amounts of vocabulary and grammar points by the characteristics of private middle schools. However, the students were assessed their own interest and self-confidence as high in the in depth interview. Thus, the quantitative results were somewhat different from the qualitative data, suggesting further studies on this research issue. The relationships between interest, self-confidence and English abilities (grammar and speaking) were positive, but not statistically significant. The reason for the non-significant relationships between interest, self-confidence and English abilities were that the number of participants in this study was very small. Furthermore, in the quantitative analysis on interest and self-confidence, the students showed similar mean scores across questionnaires items. Lastly, the relationship regarding the results of grammar knowledge and speaking ability test showed that they were statistically significant, reproving the results from previous studies that there is a relationship between them. Based on the results of this study, educational implications about how to increase interest and self-confidence of middle school students in learning English grammar were suggested. In addition, some suggestions were presented to improve students’ grammar and speaking skills.