Students' attitudes to classroom English learning: a cross-cultural study

In recent years researchers have developed a range of perspectives for conceptualizing the influences of culture on thinking and behaving. Three perspectives which are of special potential relevance to language teaching are the following: the distinction between collectivism and individualism; different perceptions of power and authority; and different types of achievement motivation. These dimensions were taken as the basis for a survey of students’ attitudes towards classroom English learning in eight East Asian countries and three European countries. It was found that most students in all countries question the traditional authority-based, transmission mode of learning. They wish to participate actively in exploring knowledge and have positive attitudes towards working purposefully, in groups, towards common goals. Whilst there were statistically significant differences between the mean responses of Asian and European students on several items, the numerical differences were not great and the overall patterns of responses were strikingly similar. Furthermore, within Asia and within Europe, there were significant differences between individual countries, and in every country there was a wide range of individual differences. Whilst these ‘deep-structure’ cross-cultural similarities may hide important ‘surface-structure’ differences in how students like to learn, they also serve to make us question some commonly held assumptions about the attitudes of Asian and Western students.