Issue |
MATEC Web of Conferences
Volume 150, 2018
Malaysia Technical Universities Conference on Engineering and Technology (MUCET 2017)
|
|
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Article Number | 05009 | |
Number of page(s) | 7 | |
Section | Education, Social Science & Technology Management | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201815005009 | |
Published online | 23 February 2018 |
It’s Not Just About the Game: A Study on Attitudes and Motivation of Malaysian Secondary Sports School Students in East Malaysia towards Learning English as a Second Language
1
Centre for Modern Languages and Human Sciences, Universiti Malaysia Pahang, 26300 Gambang, Pahang, Malaysia
2
Faculty of Industrial Management, Universiti Malaysia Pahang, 26300 Gambang, Pahang, Malaysia
3
3National Football Development Programme, National Sports Council of Malaysia, 57700 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
* Corresponding author: syaheedah@ump.edu.my
In the past few years, Malaysian athletes have gained international recognition with their impressive, world-record breaking accomplishments. As a result of this, Malaysian athletes are finding themselves being interviewed and giving speeches at local and international events. For professional athletes, there is a need and a duty to be able to communicate their stories and experiences as well as giving real insight and opinions about their performances, confidently, to both local and global audiences. In addressing these audiences, it is important for these professional athletes to be confident and are able to converse well using the English language, especially so when addressing a global audience. However, some Malaysian athletes are facing difficulties in communicating confidently and coherently, especially in English. It is a recognised and acknowledged skill gap in which is believed should be tackled during the formative school years. It is possible that the skill gap stems from a lack of motivation and poor attitude beginning from secondary school. This paper discusses the findings of a study undertaken to investigate these issues further by carrying out a questionnaire survey on the attitudes and motivation of Malaysian secondary sports school students in East Malaysia towards learning English as a second language. The study reveals an overall positive attitude towards learning English by the sports students. In addition, the findings reveal that the sports school students are extrinsically and intrinsically motivated in learning English. The study concludes with recommendations for future research and is expected to make a contribution to the literature of attitudes and motivation especially for but not limited to secondary sports school students.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2018
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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