Ade Ismail Ramadhan. 2020. Students’ Attitude Toward English As A Foreign Language In Muhammadiyah Vocational High School Of East Kalimantan (Under the Supervision of Dyah Sunggingwati, M.Pd, Ph.D and Dr. Ventje Jany Kalukar, M.A). Samarinda: Unpublished Thesis Mulawarman University.
Learning of English as Foreign language has always been considered as an important aspect in Indonesia. It plays a major role in an individual's life and also in the social context of an individual. As students’ attitude is one of the important factors for understanding the language learning. Some teachers may find this aspect is difficult to be dealt with. They will find a gap between their objective as an English teacher and their students’ attitude which influence on how students will react toward learning English. In order to bridge this gap, the teacher need to know their students’ attitude.
This study explored Muhammadiyah Vocational High School students’ attitude toward learning English. The study was focused on three major aspects of language learning (behavioral, cognitive and emotional). Furthermore, it also inspected whether there is any major difference in the Muhammadiyah students’ attitude toward learning English based on their gender (male and female). The total sample of this study was 315 participants taken from the eleventh grade of Muhammadiyah Vocational High Schools from seven districts in East Kalimantan (Kutai Kartanegara, Samarinda, Kutai Timur, Bontang, Balikpapan, Paser and Penajam Paser Utara), and took a questionnaire as a measuring instrument.
Descriptive statistic was utilized to examine some items such as frequency, mean, variance and standard deviation. The One-way ANOVA was utilized to examine the three aspects of attitude (behavioral, cognitive and emotional). Independent sample t-test was utilized to find out the probability of the difference in the students’ attitude towards English by gender. The result showed that the mean score of Cognitive Aspect of Attitude was 4.004 (SD= .293), that of the Emotional Aspect of Attitude was 3.906 (SD= .391), and the mean score of Behavioral Aspect of Attitude was 3.654 (SD= .300) and respectively whereas overall English language attitude was 3.852 (SD= .253). It showed that the students of Muhammadiyah Vocational High School had a positive attitude towards English. It was also observed that female students showed higher learning attitude (M= 132.16, SD= 9.103) than male students (M= 128.66, SD= 9.318). as for additional there were statistically significant difference in Muhammadiyah Vocational High School students’ attitudes towards learning English by gender.