Helping engineering students in Malaysia develop positive attitudes towards learning English as a second language

Abstract

Language, identity and attitudes are importantly interwoven concepts. While the role of language cannot be over emphasised especially in multilingual society like Malaysia thereby giving rise to diglossia, we cannot deny that our attempts to uphold a (our) particular linguistic identity also plays a significant role in the politics of language education. All this invariably tells on our attitudes; towards a linguistic community, towards language in general, towards a particular language and even towards our own (native) language. The consequence of this has been a dismal linguistic as well as academic performance of students. Since language is the vehicle through which they are to convey whatever it is they might have learnt, it thus becomes challenging and difficult due to inherent attitudinal issue. This is particularly worrisome considering the attitudes of engineering and generally science-based students to English who, besides the general attitudes arising from their individual loyalty to their respective mother tongues, usually do not see any nexus between their learning English and their future plans. The desire of this paper therefore was highlighting the role of attitudes in learning English as a second language with reference to the engineering students in Malaysia. Lastly, the paper gave some practical strategies for students, teachers, parents, and the schools at large to help ignite positive attitudes of the students towards learning English with a view to improving their overall performance.