THE MOTIVATION AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS LEARNING SLANG IN ENGLISH: A STUDY OF THE FOURTH-YEAR UNDERGRADUATES AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper outlines the results of a survey which was conducted to investigate the motivation and attitudes of students at Faculty of English Language Teacher Education (FELTE), University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS), Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNUH). The motivation was identified in terms of instrumental motivation, integrative motivation and personal motivation based on the constructs proposed by Cooper and Fishman in 1977 and Gardner in1985. The attitudes were identified regarding the use of slang in English in the social context, the use of slang in English in the educational context, the slang in English language and the culture of English speaking countries reflected through slang. 100 fourth-year undergraduates at FELTE were chosen to be the study sample. A questionnaire and interviews were used for data collection. As for the results, integrative motivation appears to have the most impact on the students when they learned slang in English. Personal motivation is also considered important to the students. Compared to the other two types of motivational constructs, instrumental motivation; however, has little influence on the students’ slang learning. On the other hand, the findings in terms of the attitudes reveal that the majority of the students have generally positive attitudes towards the use of slang in both social context and educational environment. Also, the students show certain interest in slang as a language itself. Particularly, the movies in which plenty of slang is used are, in general, enjoyable and interesting to the students. Thus, it can be inferred that the students positively respond to the culture of English speaking countries reflected through slang. At the end of the paper, the discussions and conclusion regarding the motivation and attitudes towards learning slang of students at FELTE, ULIS, VNUH are presented.