Afghan undergraduate students’ attitudes towards learning English

Abstract

The study aims to investigate the cognitive, affective, and behavioral attitudes of Afghan students towards learning English. It also studies the differences in the attitudes of the students by their demographic profile, i.e., gender, age, first language, field of study, access to the Internet, and English learning experience in English language centers. The data were collected from 210 randomly selected students from Takhar University through a questionnaire with 30 close-ended items. The data were analyzed using SPSS version 26.0. Descriptive statistics, sample T-test, and one-way ANOVA test were employed to answer the research questions. The findings show that the students have positive cognitive, affective, and behavioral attitudes towards learning English. The study also reveals that there is not a statistically significant difference in the attitudes of students by their gender, age, first language, and field of study. However, the attitude of students with access to the Internet and English learning experience in English language centers is more positive than that of the students without access to the Internet and English learning experience in English language centers.