INVESTIGATING UNIVERSITY OF GHANA STUDENTS’ BELIEFS AND ATTITUDES ABOUT SPANISH AND RUSSIAN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND THEIR EFFECTS ON MOTIVATION

Abstract

This study presents the results of an anonymous online questionnaire on the impact of language beliefs and attitudes on students’ motivation to learn Spanish and Russian as foreign languages at the university level. Participants of the study included 64 students of Spanish and 45 students of Russian. The findings of the study reveal that the participants have mainly positive beliefs and attitudes towards their language courses despite the apparent challenges they face in the study of these European languages. This contradicts the popular belief that students in Ghanaian universities will find these courses irrelevant in the African context. Additionally, the majority of participants had extrinsic motivations for the study of the respective languages and a significant number of them felt less motivated to study certain subjects; namely, literature and civilization.