A survey of attitudes towards and motivation in learning English of architecture students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the level of attitude and motivation in English language learning of architecture students in a public university in Pathumthani province. The study examined the participants’ attitudes in terms of three aspects: cognitive, behavioral, and emotional. In terms of motivation, instrumental and integrative motivations were explored. Fifty-three architecture students include first and second-year students in the academic year 2021-2022 from a public university. A questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were used as the research instruments for data collection. The overall aspects of attitudes were at a high level of agreement. The participants in this study had a high level of agreement on the emotional, behavioral, and cognitive aspects. However, the cognitive aspect had the highest mean among all aspects because Thai architecture students perceive the importance of English as they will need it for their future life and career. In terms of motivation, all participants were highly motivated in terms of instrumental and integrative motivation to learn English. Although both instrumental and integrative motivation were found to have a high level of agreement, instrumental motivation was rated higher than integrative motivation. Most of the students were instrumentally motivated in learning English. Moreover, the results from the interview data showed that some students were aware of the importance of learning English and were motivated to learn English. They were aware that learning English could be very helpful and the reasons to improve their English skills were for their future career and success. In terms of developing their English skills, they suggested that English learning should start with the basic knowledge of grammar and include an interesting activity related to the lesson. Also, they should start with themselves to improve their English. Therefore, the results of the interview were linked to the data from questionnaire.