The Investigation of Students’ Attitudes toward Project Work in Enhancing Independent Learning in English I at King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok

Abstract

The objectives of the study were: 1) to survey the students’ attitudes toward the project work used in the English I course; 2) to compare the attitudes toward the use of project work of high, moderate, and low English proficiency students; 3) to investigate the correlation between the students’ attitudes and their English learning achievement. The population was 4,000 first-year students enrolled in English I. The subjects were 360 students from different faculties selected using the stratified random sampling technique. An English achievement test and a close-ended questionnaire were used for the quantitative data collection. The qualitative data were gathered from the open-ended questionnaire and interviews. Descriptive statistics such as mean and Standard Deviation (S.D.), the Pearson correlation coefficient, and one-way ANOVA were used to analyze and explain the data. The results showed that the students had high to moderately positive attitudes toward the use of project work in their English class. Moreover, the results revealed that there was no difference in how the high, moderate, and low proficiency students viewed the project work, and the statistical significance of the correlation between students’ attitudes and their final scores was not found. Interestingly, the qualitative data yielded invaluable results that provide useful information for further research and pedagogical implications for language teachers.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n5p581