COLLEGE FRESHMEN’S ATTITUDE TOWARDS LEARNING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: ITS RELATION TO THEIR ENGLISH SPEAKING COMPETENCY

This descriptive study aimed to determine the college freshmen’s attitude towards learning the English language and its relation to their competency in speaking the English language. Purposively, students from two sections of Speech and Oral Communication classes were the respondents of the study. The statistical tools used were Mean, Standard Deviation and Pearson r to gather the data based on the researcher-made questionnaire on the students’ attitude, while the reading of a classic poem based on the rubric measured the students’ competency in speaking. Conducted from May to July 2013, results showed that the college freshmen had poor attitude towards learning English as a subject, but their level of competence was intermediate. There was no significant difference between their attitude in learning the English language and their competence in speaking the English language. Attitude at times may be relative, depending on the students’ overall behavior, considering various options in the context, such as the changing social, educational, and linguistic conditions and cultural background, among others. Attitudes can also be positive, negative, or neutral, and can vary according to abstract, specific or general constructs at the time of evaluation according. Results on the negative correlation may be due to giving much attention to situation specific variables related to long-term patterns and relationships.