Development of attitude scale towards vocational foreign language course

Abstract

In language teaching/learning, attitudes are crucial both for students to learn a foreign language and for language teachers to improve the curriculum, instructional methods, and course materials to better align with students’ needs and interests. Positive attitudes can lead to increased engagement, active participation, and a higher likelihood to successful language learning. On the other hand, negative attitudes might hinder learning and discourage students from fully engaging in language learning. Vocational foreign language courses are designed to equip students with language skills relevant to specific fields. Measuring attitudes towards vocational foreign language courses is important for enhancing language learning, fostering motivation, providing students with linguistic proficiency necessary in their fields and ensuring that vocational foreign language courses are responsive to the needs of students and the job market. The study aimed to develop a reliable and valid attitude scale for students towards vocational foreign language courses. In order to create initial items, students from different departments at a vocational college who took vocational foreign language course in 2013–2014 academic year were asked to write an essay expressing their feelings and thoughts about the course. Fiftyeight voluntary students wrote and submitted their essays. The repeated expressions at cognitive, affective and psychomotor levels written by 58 students in their essays were determined. In addition, attitude scales towards English language course were examined and items like the ones in these attitude scales were created. In this way, 40 initial items were taken to the draft scale. In order to ensure the validity of the scale items, the draft scale was presented to an expert in assessment and evaluation, an expert in curriculum development and three English language instructors. Considering the suggestions of the experts, 12 out of 40 items were eliminated, and the draft was reduced to 28 items for trial application. Thus, a 28-item scale (17 positive and 11 negative) was designed. The scale items were also examined by two Turkish language instructors in terms of Turkish grammar rules and intelligibility. As a result of the examination, some items were rearranged in terms of clarity. After the expert opinions, a 5-point Likert-type scale (1: strongly disagree, 2: disagree, 3: neutral, 4: agree, 5: strongly agree) was formed. Preliminary form consisting of 28 items was applied to a group of 158 voluntary students taking vocational foreign language course at a vocational college in 2014–2015 academic year. Before exploratory factor analysis (EFA), item-total correlation coefficients were analyzed, and the coefficients ranged from 0.618 to 0.827. For EFA, KMO coefficient was analyzed to check whether sample size was adequate for factor analysis and Barlett’s test was examined to check whether variables are distributed normally. KMO coefficient was 0.953 and Barlett’s test was 0.00. Then, EFA was applied to determine the factor loadings and construct validity. EFA showed that the eigenvalues of 28 items in the scale were distributed to four factors higher than 1, which explained 65.668% of the total variance. The contribution of the four factors to the total variance was 52.525%, 5.127%, 4.284% and 3.731%, respectively. The eigenvalues of the factors were 14.707; 1.436; 1.200 and 1.045, respectively. Factor loading values of all the items in the scale were high in the first factor and ranged from 0.619 to 0.829. Next, Scree Plot was analyzed, and there was a rapid decrease after the first factor. The fact that the first factor loading values of all items in the scale were high, that the variance explained by the first factor was significant, and that the eigenvalue of the first factor was three times higher than the eigenvalue of the second factor were evidences that the scale had one factor. Moreover, the first factor alone accounted for 52.525% of the total variance. The fact that a factor explains more than 30% of the total variance can be considered as an indicator that the scale has one factor. Therefore, it was concluded that the scale had a one-factor structure. Cronbach Alpha reliability analysis was estimated as 0.96. The psychological scales with 0.70 and higher Cronbach Alpha values are regarded as reliable scales. Therefore, attitude scale towards vocational foreign language course was regarded to be a reliable, valid and one-factor scale. 331 voluntary students taking vocational foreign language course at two vocational colleges in 2015-2016 academic year participated in the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) study to test the one-factor structure of the developed scale and convenience of the model proposed after EFA. Fit indices of the one-factor model were analyzed and chi-square (χ2 = 1068.43, sd = 350, χ2/sd = 3.05, p < 0.001) was found significant. When estimated fit indices (RMSEA = 0.08 and CFI = 0.81) were examined, the values were observed to be close to the ones expressed in the literature but not at the expected level. After examining modification indices about the variables in the model, it was observed that errors of some items were related to each other. Based on these indices, error correlations for the item pairs under the same latent variable were added to the model, and the model was retested. Final CFA exhibited that chi-square values (χ2 = 727.55, sd = 336, χ2/sd=2.17, p < .001) were significant, and fit indices of the model were (RMSEA = .06, SRMR = .06, IFI = .90, CFI = .90) were acceptable. Therefore, the results of the CFA indicated that the model had acceptable fit indices. Factor loading values and error correlations of the items were observed to be statistically significant. After CFA, Cronbach Alpha reliability analysis of the one-factor scale was estimated as 0.93. In conclusion, the study successfully developed a 28-item Attitude Scale towards Vocational Foreign Language Course, demonstrating its reliability and validity. The scale can be used to assess students’ attitudes towards vocational foreign language courses, which is vital for language teaching and improving vocational foreign language curricula to better meet students’ needs and interests.